Hiroshima and Nagasaki - did they really end the war.

[Divine Wind]

Oh gosh really?

Those bombs did an immense amount of damage. And they shook the national psyche. I've been to Japan many times. And the war is still very fresh in the minds of the Japanese.

True, but not enought to admit to the rape of Nanking or turning Korean women into sex slaves. They just bitch about being nuked.

I spent over a year in the region including a visit to Hiroshima. You'll pardon me if I don't pity them for the way the war turned out or how we became involved in it.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I lived on Kyushu, close to Nagasaki. Been there many times. Beautiful city (today).

Trust me - the bombs did MUCH damage. 90,000–166,000 killed in Hiroshima, 60,000–80,000 killed in Nagasaki

You don't find that significant ?

I think his point was that we could have done as much damage with conventional bombing. Like the firebombing of Tokyo. They didn't surrender after that one

Government notes FROM the Japanese Government at the time prove conclusively that the Emperor forced the Army running the Government to surrender after the second atomic bomb. And even with their LIVING GOD demanding a surrender with no terms, the Imperial Army mounted a Coup to prevent his recorded words from being broadcast and to prevent the surrender.

Prior to the bombs Japan's Government DEMANDED terms that were not surrender. Even the OP admits that.

This is the only logical narrative from all the facts we know. The Japanese military before 6 August 1945 had no intention of surrendering, the Emperor used the incredible devastation of the bombs to force a truce and surrender, and certain army elements tried to force a coup to avoid surrender.

Yes, the nukes were instrumental to the surrender.

Any other narrative does not include all the factors.

 

[JakeStarkey]

I'm talking about government/military opinion. Inherent racism wasn't the only reason but it was a big factor in using Atomic weapons against the Japanese and it is seldom addressed. There was no plan to use the Bomb on Europeans who looked like us even though the casualty numbers were staggering after Normandy. When you factor in a weak relatively cluless president handpicked by the DNC to replace the dying FDR while the more experienced and moderate V.P. was on vacation it's not suprising that "give 'em hell" Harry Truman would authorize the use of the Bomb while refusing to negotiate surrender terms.

The Bomb was not availible for use in Europe, as the war there ended before it could be tested. Also in Europe the Germans had no hope of stopping any of the allied thrusts. All the forces were on land, and the cohesion of the german forces was disintegrating.

I don't agree with your assesment of Truman either. Remember we refused to negotiate with the Germans as well. If the war in europe was static when a bomb was availible I don't see anyone holding back dropping one on Berlin to end the war. We had already bombed the living hell out of most of thier industrial cities the old fashioned way anyway.

You have to remember that since no one had ever seen one before, a nuclear bomb was just another explosive device used to defeat the enemy. I did not have the negative connotation we see now, as no one knew what the hell it really was.

It was an allied decsion not to negotiate with Japan and to only accept unconditional surrender. This had far more to do with the lessons of WWI than with any inherent racsim.

I

Imagine a hick former clothing store manager from Missouri with a high school education having his finger on the trigger of Atomic weapons. When he woke up one morning in 1945 and found himself president of the United States Truman admitted that he had no clue. Maybe that's what democrats intended when they ran him for V.P. while FDR was dying or mentally unfit due to a series of strokes. The media never saw a democrat they didn't like so they inflated Truman's legacy even though he couldn't even win a primary for a second full term and dropped out of politics. Japan was always the intended target for a test of Atomic weapons on humans. The book "First into Nagasaki" was compiled from a series of articles written by Pulitzer winner George Weller who worked for the A.P. Every article about the Atomic devistation was spiked by MacArther (who was appointed the new emperor of Japan) and was never printed. Weller's son found carbon copies after his father's death and they were published.

whitehall has removed any doubt about his dedication to untruths and fabrication. For shame.

 

[daveman]

Well, it's a good thing they quit, because the U.S. expected to have another atomic bomb ready for use in the third week of August, with three more in September and a three more in October.

Considering that the US is the only country who has nuked anyone, I think it's ironic we're telling other countries what nukes they can have.

We used them responsibly and wisely. Their use prevented far more deaths than they caused.

 

[peach174]

Not really.

This is one of the myths we Americans like to tell ourselves, but the Japanese Surrender had a lot more to do with the fact the USSR entered the Pacific War.

Japan's goal in 1945 was not to win. They knew they were done. It was to get a favorable peace. One that let them keep some of their gains in China. When the USSR entered the war on August 8th, and started rolling up their Armies in a few days, they knew they had no real options. Eithere Japan could be entirely occuppied by the US, or partioned like Germany.

And there were enough horror stories about what the soviets were doing in East Germany to make that an easy pick.

The bombs, on the other hand, didn't do that much damage. They were relatively low kilotons, we had devastated Japans cities with conventional bombing and killed far more people that way.

No is is not a myth and any WWII vet that was there and is still alive will tell you so.
So will any Japanese that lived through it and is still alive today
I don't know why you young buy into the lies and not the reality that is taught to you.

 

[bitterlyclingin]

We only had two bombs which were serendipitously dropped at the correct altitude, ie the wave resonance effect and all that. Otherwise the Japanese would have just laughed at us, said " So what.You guys got a hot bomb" and kept on fighting.
The Russians involvement in the war was part of the reason the Japanese decided to quit fighting, but there was more to it than that. The Japanese were dissappearing as a people.
3,000 fighting men at Tarawa. They uniformly did not surrender
27,000 at Saipan
17,000 on Guam
12,000 on pelieliu
upwards of 600,000 men on the Phillipines
21,000 on Iwo Jima
100,000 on Okinawa
Not counting the losses on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Phillipine Sea, Leyte Gulf, the 100,000 dead in one night in the firebombing of Tokyo, March, 1945, or the 65 other Japanese Cities that were also hit by "Hurricanes of flame". The Japanese Home Islands were cut off, isolated from the rest of their Empire. They had no food, no fuel for warmth or production, no raw materiels, no clothing, no shelter.
Hirohito rightly thought he was looking at the extinction of the Japanese people.
"You cannot win at the negotiating table what you cannot win on the battlefield"
"There is no substitute for overwhelming force"

 

[whitehall]

The Bomb was not availible for use in Europe, as the war there ended before it could be tested. Also in Europe the Germans had no hope of stopping any of the allied thrusts. All the forces were on land, and the cohesion of the german forces was disintegrating.

I don't agree with your assesment of Truman either. Remember we refused to negotiate with the Germans as well. If the war in europe was static when a bomb was availible I don't see anyone holding back dropping one on Berlin to end the war. We had already bombed the living hell out of most of thier industrial cities the old fashioned way anyway.

You have to remember that since no one had ever seen one before, a nuclear bomb was just another explosive device used to defeat the enemy. I did not have the negative connotation we see now, as no one knew what the hell it really was.

It was an allied decsion not to negotiate with Japan and to only accept unconditional surrender. This had far more to do with the lessons of WWI than with any inherent racsim.

I

Imagine a hick former clothing store manager from Missouri with a high school education having his finger on the trigger of Atomic weapons. When he woke up one morning in 1945 and found himself president of the United States Truman admitted that he had no clue. Maybe that's what democrats intended when they ran him for V.P. while FDR was dying or mentally unfit due to a series of strokes. The media never saw a democrat they didn't like so they inflated Truman's legacy even though he couldn't even win a primary for a second full term and dropped out of politics. Japan was always the intended target for a test of Atomic weapons on humans. The book "First into Nagasaki" was compiled from a series of articles written by Pulitzer winner George Weller who worked for the A.P. Every article about the Atomic devistation was spiked by MacArther (who was appointed the new emperor of Japan) and was never printed. Weller's son found carbon copies after his father's death and they were published.

whitehall has removed any doubt about his dedication to untruths and fabrication. For shame.

Jakie, maybe you and I had a different educational experience but you don't get to words like fabrication and shame unless you prove me wrong.

 

[daveman]

Imagine a hick former clothing store manager from Missouri with a high school education having his finger on the trigger of Atomic weapons. When he woke up one morning in 1945 and found himself president of the United States Truman admitted that he had no clue. Maybe that's what democrats intended when they ran him for V.P. while FDR was dying or mentally unfit due to a series of strokes. The media never saw a democrat they didn't like so they inflated Truman's legacy even though he couldn't even win a primary for a second full term and dropped out of politics. Japan was always the intended target for a test of Atomic weapons on humans. The book "First into Nagasaki" was compiled from a series of articles written by Pulitzer winner George Weller who worked for the A.P. Every article about the Atomic devistation was spiked by MacArther (who was appointed the new emperor of Japan) and was never printed. Weller's son found carbon copies after his father's death and they were published.

whitehall has removed any doubt about his dedication to untruths and fabrication. For shame.

Jakie, maybe you and I had a different educational experience but you don't get to words like fabrication and shame unless you prove me wrong.

Fakey doesn't do proof. He thinks his say-so should be sufficient for us proles.

 

[whitehall]

Frankly I'm suprised that some people still think that nuking civilians in a fireball is legitimate payback for military atrosities. That argument should be off the table.

 

[daveman]

Frankly I'm suprised that some people still think that nuking civilians in a fireball is legitimate payback for military atrosities. That argument should be off the table.

We didn't have precision weapons back then. How many civilians would have died in an invasion of the home islands?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Regardless of the points of contention, Truman refused to even talk to the Japanese while Stalin was lying to them and hoping to gobble up territory. It's hard to imagine today but our own government was hanging on to a antiquated racist opinion of the Japanese. Racism was one of the reasons the US was so unprepared for Pearl Harbor and the Philippine surrender. Elected officials actually thought that Japan couldn't build a ship that would float or a plane that would fly and the nearsighted Japanese couldn't fly anyway. It was the conventional thinking and even the eggheads who built the Bomb were dying to try it out on an inferior race.

The allies gave the Potsdam declration, which stated thier terms. The Japanese refused it. Yes there was racsim, but there was racism both ways. The Japanese as a race we pretty damn full of themselves as well. Even then the US/Japan fighting was second in ferocity and racial hatred. The German/Russian front was far worse, and all those people were white.

You are also confusing popular opinion vs. government/military opinion. While the military did not think the Japanese would attack pearl harbor, they were assuming an attack would happen in the Indonesia area, and they figured it would be sucessful. They did underestimate thier ability and materials, but it had just as much to do with seeing Japan as a relatively new industrial nation as it did with the background racial thoughts of the time.

I'm talking about government/military opinion. Inherent racism wasn't the only reason but it was a big factor in using Atomic weapons against the Japanese and it is seldom addressed. There was no plan to use the Bomb on Europeans who looked like us even though the casualty numbers were staggering after Normandy. When you factor in a weak relatively cluless president handpicked by the DNC to replace the dying FDR while the more experienced and moderate V.P. was on vacation it's not suprising that "give 'em hell" Harry Truman would authorize the use of the Bomb while refusing to negotiate surrender terms.

Another red herring. The Atomic Bombs were not used on Germany because they SURRENDERED BEFORE they were ready. Japan made no real effort to surrender. She demanded that the war just end and Japan keep everything she had before the war started including in China.

The demand did not change even after one atomic bomb. After the second the Army which ran the Government still refused to surrender and only the decision of the Emperor ended the war. The Emperor who was considered to be a living God. And the Army attempted a Coup to stop even that.

 

[Divine Wind]

Not counting the losses on Guadalcanal, New Guinea, the Phillipine Sea, Leyte Gulf, the 100,000 dead in one night in the firebombing of Tokyo, March, 1945, or the 65 other Japanese Cities that were also hit by "Hurricanes of flame". The Japanese Home Islands were cut off, isolated from the rest of their Empire. They had no food, no fuel for warmth or production, no raw materiels, no clothing, no shelter.
Hirohito rightly thought he was looking at the extinction of the Japanese people.
"You cannot win at the negotiating table what you cannot win on the battlefield"
"There is no substitute for overwhelming force"

I think you are drawing the wrong conclusion from history because you are not looking through it with the eyes of a Japanese soldier of the era. Japanese are tough people. The reasons those casualty rates were so high is because they don't surrender. This isn't simply because they are either very brave or very foolish, but because they truly walk the walk when it comes to believing in an afterlife. Lots of American Christians talk the talk about heaven and the afterlife, but many cling to life like there was no tomorrow. Japanese, especially of that period, would guard their life, but realize that it was only temporary and that there were more important things than a small extension of their mortal being.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

whitehall has removed any doubt about his dedication to untruths and fabrication. For shame.

Jakie, maybe you and I had a different educational experience but you don't get to words like fabrication and shame unless you prove me wrong.

Fakey doesn't do proof. He thinks his say-so should be sufficient for us proles.

Whitehall thinks the Japanese did not surrender due to the bombs and you support him?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Frankly I'm suprised that some people still think that nuking civilians in a fireball is legitimate payback for military atrosities. That argument should be off the table.

We did not drop the bombs to kill civilians, both targets were legit military targets. It was not about payback it was about ending the war quickly BEFORE an allied Invasion of the Japanese Islands. An allied invasion that would be mostly American.

 

[Patrick2]

SOW THE WIND.........

AND REAP THE WHIRLWIND..........

 

[martybegan]

Frankly I'm suprised that some people still think that nuking civilians in a fireball is legitimate payback for military atrosities. That argument should be off the table.

The only difference between the two nukes used and the firebombing of both German and Japanese cities was the fact it only took 1 bomber instead of 500. We gutted cities in both theatres for years before we dropped the A-bombs, and killed far more people, both german and japanese with conventional high exlposives and incindiaries that with nukes.

Maybe there was a feeling of "payback" but the whole pacific war was about payback after pearl harbor, and It was the Japanese who made it personal by deciding on a sneak attack prior to the declaration of war.

 

[daveman]

Jakie, maybe you and I had a different educational experience but you don't get to words like fabrication and shame unless you prove me wrong.

Fakey doesn't do proof. He thinks his say-so should be sufficient for us proles.

Whitehall thinks the Japanese did not surrender due to the bombs and you support him?

Where does what I said show any support for Whitehall?

 

[editec]

Of course we'll never really know, but sans an unconditional surrender we'd have invaded the Japanese main Islands and I SUSPECT that the total loss of innocent civilians would have been magnitudes higher than the total losses that came from the two atomic bombs.

And even if that was NOT the case, it is indisputable that the loss of US troops would have been much much higher than it was.

And saving US servicement's lives was, and should have been, the most important issue on Truman's mind.

The Japanese started the war and their troops behavior in China and SE Asia was an ongoing crime against humanity that was sanctioned by their leaders.

I have no sympathy whatever for the argument the USA ought to have not used both bombs to bring that war to an end as soon as possible.

Had I been POTUD before VE day, and if the conditions for the end to the war against Germany had been similar to that we faced against Japan?

I'd have nuked Germans cities, too.

This is not about racism, this is about unconditional WAR against criminal regimes whose history of crimes against humanity made ending those regimes a a MORAL imperitive for mankind.

 

[daveman]

Of course we'll never really know, but sans an unconditional surrender we'd have invaded the Japanese main Islands and I SUSPECT that the total loss of innocent civilians would have been magnitudes higher than the total losses that came from the two atomic bombs.

And even if that was NOT the case, it is indisputable that the loss of US troops would have been much much higher than it was.

And saving US servicement's lives was, and should have been, the most important issue on Truman's mind.

The Japanese started the war and their troops behavior in China and SE Asia was an ongoing crime against humanity that was sanctioned by their leaders.

I have no sympathy whatever for the argument the USA ought to have not used both bombs to bring that war to an end as soon as possible.

Had I been POTUD before VE day, and if the conditions for the end to the war against Germany had been similar to that we faced against Japan?

I'd have nuked Germans cities, too.

This is not about racism, this is about unconditional WAR against criminal regimes whose history of crimes against humanity made ending those regimes a a MORAL imperitive for mankind.

Operation Downfall - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Because the U.S. military planners assumed "that operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population",[10] high casualties were thought to be inevitable, but nobody knew with certainty how high. Several people made estimates, but they varied widely in numbers, assumptions, and purposes—which included advocating for and against the invasion. Afterwards, they were reused in the debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Casualty estimates were based on the experience of the preceding campaigns, drawing different lessons:

• In a letter sent to Gen. Curtis LeMay from Gen. Lauris Norstad, when LeMay assumed command of the B-29 force on Guam, Norstad told LeMay that if an invasion took place, it would cost the U.S. "half a million" dead.[41]
• In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, the figures of 7.45 casualties/1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities/1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities.[42]
• A study done by Adm. Nimitz's staff in May estimated 49,000 U.S casualties in the first 30 days, including 5,000 at sea.[43] A study done by General MacArthur's staff in June estimated 23,000 U.S. casualties in the first 30 days and 125,000 after 120 days.[44] When these figures were questioned by General Marshall, MacArthur submitted a revised estimate of 105,000, in part by deducting wounded men able to return to duty.[45]
• In a conference with President Truman on June 18, Marshall, taking the Battle of Luzon as the best model for Olympic, thought the Americans would suffer 31,000 casualties in the first 30 days (and ultimately 20% of Japanese casualties, which implied a total of 70,000 casualties).[46] Adm. Leahy, more impressed by the Battle of Okinawa, thought the American forces would suffer a 35% casualty rate (implying an ultimate toll of 268,000).[47] Admiral King thought that casualties in the first 30 days would fall between Luzon and Okinawa, i.e., between 31,000 and 41,000.[47]

Of these estimates, only Nimitz's included losses of the forces at sea, though kamikazes had inflicted 1.78 fatalities per kamikaze pilot in the Battle of Okinawa,[48] and troop transports off Kyūshū would have been much more exposed.

• A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7-4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.[1]

Outside the government, well-informed civilians were also making guesses. Kyle Palmer—war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times—said half a million to a million Americans would die by the end of the war. Herbert Hoover, in memorandums submitted to Truman and Stimson, also estimated 500,000-1,000,000 fatalities, and were believed to be conservative estimates; but it is not known if Hoover discussed these specific figures in his meetings with Truman. The chief of the Army Operations division thought them "entirely too high" under "our present plan of campaign."[49]
The Battle of Okinawa ran up 72,000 U.S casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing. (This is conservative, because it excludes several thousand U.S. soldiers who died after the battle indirectly from their wounds.) The entire island of Okinawa is 464 sq mi (1,200 km2). If the U.S. casualty rate during the invasion of Japan had only been 5% as high per unit area as it was at Okinawa, the U.S. would still have lost 297,000 soldiers (killed or missing).
Nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties resulting from the invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the 60 years following the end of World War II—including the Korean and Vietnam Wars—have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[50] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.[50]​

 

[Patrick2]

Of course we'll never really know, but sans an unconditional surrender we'd have invaded the Japanese main Islands and I SUSPECT that the total loss of innocent civilians would have been magnitudes higher than the total losses that came from the two atomic bombs.

Great scott, get a clue. Operation Olympic, the invasion of Honshu, would have been proceded by up to six months of bombing everything man-made by B-29s. Duh, would that kill any civilians? Also, the japanese had organized every man and woman between about 15 and 60 to fight in a sort of militia, around 28 million people, armed with such as bamboo pikes, to help repell the invaders. Hmmmm - maybe a casualty or two there?