Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
The bottom line is that dropping the two bombs, which we really had no clue if they would work or what would be the result,
You're being facetious, right? You really cannot be serious.
"Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs that "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Moreover, Leahy continued, "in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."Anecdotal stories from a cook at Fort Sill or whatever don't amount to squat as 'proof' of anything. Out of 160 million people you could find at least 100 people who claim the moon was made of blue cheese.
"Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs that "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Moreover, Leahy continued, "in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, recalled in 1963, as he did on several other occasions, that he had opposed using the atomic bomb on Japan during a July 1945 meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson: "I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, the tough and outspoken commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, which participated in the American offensive against the Japanese home islands in the final months of the war, publicly stated in 1946 that "the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment." The Japanese, he noted, had "put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before" the bomb was used. "
^^^^^^^Where is the real rightwinger? What have you done with him? He would never be agreeing with me on something like this. The gig is up. Who are you, really?
To follow up on your valid points, Truman knew weeks before Hiroshima that if he would just assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be deposed, the Japanese would surrender on terms that were acceptable to us. He knew this because we were reading the Japanese diplomatic cables--all of them. He knew that the emperor himself wanted to end the war and that the only snag was the demand for "unconditional surrender." Many Japan experts, including former Ambassador Grew, told Truman that guaranteeing the emperor's status would lead to an acceptable Japanese surrender.
Truman and his inner circle, along with most of the War Department, also knew that Japan was prostrate and beaten, that Japan was virtually defenseless again our air raids, that our naval blockade had cut off most shipping, that Japan's merchant fleet was almost non-existent, that its Navy had been reduced by about 90%, and that for months the Japanese people had been surviving on greatly reduced food rations.
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) spent months studying the effects of our conventional and atomic bombing of Japan and concluded that Japan would have surrendered by no later than December 1945, and probably before November, even if we had not used the atomic bomb and even if the Soviet Union had not entered the war against Japan:
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. (USSBS 26)
^^^^^^^^Gosh, this is idiotic. The moderates were trying to offer to surrender before and after the first bomb, but the militarists were able to block them because they were able to harp on the fact that there was no guarantee that the emperor would not be deposed in a surrender.
And let's review the facts about Japan's peace feelers--again:
-- In April 1945, none other than Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan’s Foreign Minister at the time, approached the Swedish minister to Japan and asked if Sweden would be willing to mediate a surrender agreement with the U.S. Now, I would say that a peace feeler done by Japan’s Foreign Minister was both official and very high level.
Shigemitsu’s effort did not succeed, but that was only because his successor, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, believed that a more powerful intermediary should be approached. Togo did not object to the approach on principle, but only to the proposed intermediary. Togo suggested that the Soviets be approached to mediate a surrender with the U.S.
-- Another peace feeler was carried out in Berne, Switzerland, by Yoshiro Fujimura, the Japanese naval attache in Berne, and had the backing of Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, the Navy Minister; General Shuichi Miyazaki, the Chief of Operations; and Admiral Sokichi Takagi, who even offered to fly to Switzerland to open formal negotiations. On May 3, three months before Hiroshima, Dr. Heck, the German intermediary in the approach, was informed by the office of Allen Dulles that the U.S. State Department had authorized direct negotiations with the Fujimura group. Allen Dulles was the head of the OSS office in Switzerland and had numerous high connections, including in the White House.
Fujimura contacted the Navy Ministry and made them aware of his negotiations with the Dulles people. On May 23, the Navy Ministry sent Fujimura a reply, signed by the Navy Minister: the ministry advised him to be cautious but did *not* shut down the approach.
Yonai then informed Foreign Minister Togo of the negotiations, and Togo authorized Yonai to have the Fujimura group explore the Dulles proposal more thoroughly.
So the claim that the approach to Dulles was some meaningless low-level effort that had no backing in Tokyo is demonstrably incorrect. The hardliners eventually succeeded in killing the Fujimura approach to Dulles, but it was not a meaningless effort with no high-level support.
And why were the militarists able to shut down this peace feeler? And why were they able to repeatedly block the moderates' efforts to bring about a surrender? Because they were able to stress that there was no guarantee that the emperor would not be deposed in a surrender. This was militarists' trump card, and they were able to play it over and over again against the moderates, thanks to Truman's foolish, disastrous refusal to simply give a private assurance that the emperor would not be deposed if Japan surrendered.
We know that on June 4, two months before Hiroshima, Truman received a report on this peace feeler. The report stated that the Fujimura people “particularly stress” the need to maintain the emperor in any surrender in order “to avoid Communism and chaos.” The report added that Fujimura had emphasized the fact that Japan could no longer supply herself with “essential foodstuffs,” i.e., the people were beginning to starve.
On June 22, Truman received another memo on the Fujimura-Dulles peace talks. The memo advised him that “Fujimura insists that the Japanese, before surrendering, would require assurances that the Emperor would be retained.”
So Truman knew, long before Hiroshima, that the only real obstacle to a surrender was his refusal to assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be deposed if they surrendered.
-- The second peace feeler in Switzerland involved General Seigo Okamoto, the Japanese military attache in Berne, and two Japanese officials at the International Bank of Settlements in Basel. Not only was Okamoto a general and the head of the Japanese attache office in Berne, he was a close friend of General Yoshijiru Omezu, the Japanese Army Chief of Staff. This feeler also involved Per Jacobsson, a Swiss bank director. This was not Jacobsson’s first involvement with back-door peace negotiations: he had persuaded De Valera to negotiate with the British in 1935.
This approach was made to Gero Gaevernitz, Dulles’s second-in-command, and to Dulles himself. Gaevernitz was no stranger to back-door negotiations either: he had recently masterminded the surrender of all German forces in Italy.
When Jacobsson met with Dulles and Gaevernitz, he told them that the Japanese moderates were doing their best to bring about a surrender but that the Allied demand for unconditional surrender was greatly helping the hardliners. Jacobsson further told Dulles that the only real Japanese condition for surrender was that the emperor not be deposed. Following this meeting, Dulles placed a call to Potsdam.
We also know that on July 13, nearly a month before Hiroshima, Dulles sent a message about his contact with Jacobsson to Potsdam in which he advised that it had been indicated to him that “the only condition on which Japan would insist with respect to surrender would be some consideration for the Japanese Imperial family.”
William Donovan, the head of the OSS, sent a follow-up message to Truman on July 16 about the Dulles-Jacobsson meeting and stated that Jacobsson advised that Japanese officials had stressed only two conditions for surrender, namely, that the emperor be retained and that there be the “possibility” of retaining the Meiji Constitution.
-- Furthermore, Emperor Hirohito himself authorized the effort to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender with the U.S., and Truman was aware of this fact from Foreign Minister Togo’s July 12 cable. Hirohito even wanted to send Prince Konoye to Moscow as a special envoy to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender deal with the U.S. I’d say that a peace feeler pushed by the Foreign Minister and strongly backed by Emperor Hirohito was about as substantial, official, and high ranking as you could get.
These peace feelers, and others, are discussed in detail by John Toland in The Rising Sun, by Lester Brooks in Behind Japan’s Surrender, and by Gar Alperovitz in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.
Incidentally, the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian website includes an article on the Japanese peace feelers, and it documents that American high officials were aware of these efforts:
The contents of certain of these papers [Japanese messages and memos about the peace feelers] were known to United States officials in Washington, however, as early as July 13 (see Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York, 1951), page 74; cf. pages 75–76) and information on Japanese peace maneuvers was received by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson at Babelsberg on July 16 (see volume II, document No. 1236, footnote 4). It has also been determined that a series of messages of Japanese origin on this subject was received by the United States Delegation during the course of the Berlin Conference and that these messages were circulated at Babelsberg to some members of the President’s party. Furthermore, in a conference on January 24, 1956, between Truman and members of his staff and Department of State historians, Truman supplied the information that he was familiar with the contents of the first Japanese peace feeler (i. e., the proposal contained in document No. 582) before Stalin mentioned it to him at Babelsberg (see volume II, page 87) and that he was familiar with the contents of the second Japanese peace feeler (i. e., the approach reported in document No. 1234) before Stalin brought it to the attention of Truman and Attlee at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Berlin Conference on July 28 (see volume II, page 460).
Are you ever going to start telling the truth about this stuff?
^^^^^^^This is clown material. We've had this same discussion at least twice, and you just keep repeating your drivel. Now, there are very good, scholarly books that provide detailed discussions on the Japanese peace feelers, the fact that most of them were supported by senior Japanese leaders, and the moderates' efforts--supported by the emperor--to bring about an early surrender. Read Gar Alperovitz's still-unrefuted book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, or Washington State University professor Noriko Kawamura's book Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War, or John Toland's book The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, or Lester Brooks' book Behind Japan's Surrender.
Let's review, yet again, the evidence regarding Japan's peace feelers:
-- In April 1945, none other than Mamoru Shigemitsu, Japan’s Foreign Minister at the time, approached the Swedish minister to Japan and asked if Sweden would be willing to mediate a surrender agreement with the U.S. Now, I would say that a peace feeler done by Japan’s Foreign Minister was both official and very high level.
Shigemitsu’s effort did not succeed, but that was only because his successor, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, believed that a more powerful intermediary should be approached. Togo did not object to the approach on principle, but only to the proposed intermediary. Togo suggested that the Soviets be approached to mediate a surrender with the U.S.
-- Another peace feeler was carried out in Berne, Switzerland, by Yoshiro Fujimura, the Japanese naval attache in Berne, and had the backing of Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, the Navy Minister; General Shuichi Miyazaki, the Chief of Operations; and Admiral Sokichi Takagi, who even offered to fly to Switzerland to open formal negotiations. On May 3, three months before Hiroshima, Dr. Heck, the German intermediary in the approach, was informed by the office of Allen Dulles that the U.S. State Department had authorized direct negotiations with the Fujimura group. Allen Dulles was the head of the OSS office in Switzerland and had numerous high connections, including in the White House.
Fujimura contacted the Navy Ministry and made them aware of his negotiations with the Dulles people. On May 23, the Navy Ministry sent Fujimura a reply, signed by the Navy Minister: the ministry advised him to be cautious but did *not* shut down the approach.
Yonai then informed Foreign Minister Togo of the negotiations, and Togo authorized Yonai to have the Fujimura group explore the Dulles proposal more thoroughly.
So the claim that the approach to Dulles was some meaningless low-level effort that had no backing in Tokyo is demonstrably incorrect. The hardliners eventually succeeded in killing the Fujimura approach to Dulles, but it was not a meaningless effort with no high-level support.
And why were the militarists able to shut down this peace feeler? And why were they able to repeatedly block the moderates' efforts to bring about a surrender? Because they were able to stress that there was no guarantee that the emperor would not be deposed in a surrender. This was militarists' trump card, and they were able to play it over and over again against the moderates, thanks to Truman's foolish, disastrous refusal to simply give a private assurance that the emperor would not be deposed if Japan surrendered.
We know that on June 4, two months before Hiroshima, Truman received a report on this peace feeler. The report stated that the Fujimura people “particularly stress” the need to maintain the emperor in any surrender in order “to avoid Communism and chaos.” The report added that Fujimura had emphasized the fact that Japan could no longer supply herself with “essential foodstuffs,” i.e., the people were beginning to starve.
On June 22, Truman received another memo on the Fujimura-Dulles peace talks. The memo advised him that “Fujimura insists that the Japanese, before surrendering, would require assurances that the Emperor would be retained.”
So Truman knew, long before Hiroshima, that the only real obstacle to a surrender was his refusal to assure the Japanese that the emperor would not be deposed if they surrendered.
-- The second peace feeler in Switzerland involved General Seigo Okamoto, the Japanese military attache in Berne, and two Japanese officials at the International Bank of Settlements in Basel. Not only was Okamoto a general and the head of the Japanese attache office in Berne, he was a close friend of General Yoshijiru Omezu, the Japanese Army Chief of Staff. This feeler also involved Per Jacobsson, a Swiss bank director. This was not Jacobsson’s first involvement with back-door peace negotiations: he had persuaded De Valera to negotiate with the British in 1935.
This approach was made to Gero Gaevernitz, Dulles’s second-in-command, and to Dulles himself. Gaevernitz was no stranger to back-door negotiations either: he had recently masterminded the surrender of all German forces in Italy.
When Jacobsson met with Dulles and Gaevernitz, he told them that the Japanese moderates were doing their best to bring about a surrender but that the Allied demand for unconditional surrender was greatly helping the hardliners. Jacobsson further told Dulles that the only real Japanese condition for surrender was that the emperor not be deposed. Following this meeting, Dulles placed a call to Potsdam.
We also know that on July 13, nearly a month before Hiroshima, Dulles sent a message about his contact with Jacobsson to Potsdam in which he advised that it had been indicated to him that “the only condition on which Japan would insist with respect to surrender would be some consideration for the Japanese Imperial family.”
William Donovan, the head of the OSS, sent a follow-up message to Truman on July 16 about the Dulles-Jacobsson meeting and stated that Jacobsson advised that Japanese officials had stressed only two conditions for surrender, namely, that the emperor be retained and that there be the “possibility” of retaining the Meiji Constitution.
-- Furthermore, Emperor Hirohito himself authorized the effort to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender with the U.S., and Truman was aware of this fact from Foreign Minister Togo’s July 12 cable. Hirohito even wanted to send Prince Konoye to Moscow as a special envoy to get the Soviets to mediate a surrender deal with the U.S. I’d say that a peace feeler pushed by the Foreign Minister and strongly backed by Emperor Hirohito was about as substantial, official, and high ranking as you could get.
These peace feelers, and others, are discussed in detail by John Toland in The Rising Sun, by Lester Brooks in Behind Japan’s Surrender, and by Gar Alperovitz in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb.
Incidentally, the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Historian website includes an article on the Japanese peace feelers, and it documents that American high officials were aware of these efforts:
The contents of certain of these papers [Japanese messages and memos about the peace feelers] were known to United States officials in Washington, however, as early as July 13 (see Walter Millis, ed., The Forrestal Diaries (New York, 1951), page 74; cf. pages 75–76) and information on Japanese peace maneuvers was received by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson at Babelsberg on July 16 (see volume II, document No. 1236, footnote 4). It has also been determined that a series of messages of Japanese origin on this subject was received by the United States Delegation during the course of the Berlin Conference and that these messages were circulated at Babelsberg to some members of the President’s party. Furthermore, in a conference on January 24, 1956, between Truman and members of his staff and Department of State historians, Truman supplied the information that he was familiar with the contents of the first Japanese peace feeler (i. e., the proposal contained in document No. 582) before Stalin mentioned it to him at Babelsberg (see volume II, page 87) and that he was familiar with the contents of the second Japanese peace feeler (i. e., the approach reported in document No. 1234) before Stalin brought it to the attention of Truman and Attlee at the Tenth Plenary Meeting of the Berlin Conference on July 28 (see volume II, page 460).
Are you ever going to start telling the truth about this stuff?
No, I have facts and a real understanding of history.....
Unkotare, all you have are WHAT IFs. ....
Here again we see your understanding of history and culture from comic books and cartoons.....Don't even consider the fact that to the Japanese he was a God. The FACTS are that the Japanese would commit suicide rather than surrender even with hopeless odds. ....
You might want to think about that.In my humble opinion, after decades, if everyone agrees on an idea or plan, there is something wrong, something they are missing. ...
...ACTUALLY...Actually, we knew they would work. Especially the Fat Man implosion bomb, as it was the exact same weapon that was code named "Gadget" that was tested at White Sands in July. That was the only one that was questionable and it worked perfectly when it was tested.
Yes, it was tested under laboratory conditions. They knew it would work, but not under battle conditions. The difference was huge. For instance, the stability of the bomb was unknown. The bomb had to be armed in flight close to ground zero. The bomb was so large that the person arming the bomb had to be small and wedge himself in between the body of the aircraft and bomb. Anything could have gone wrong including the bomb detonating prematurely.
Yes, it was good to have an unrestricted discussion of the pros and cons. What is your point? It was successful. No longer is that debatable."Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war. Leahy wrote in his 1950 memoirs that "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." Moreover, Leahy continued, "in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
President Dwight Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe during World War II, recalled in 1963, as he did on several other occasions, that he had opposed using the atomic bomb on Japan during a July 1945 meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson: "I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon."
Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, the tough and outspoken commander of the U.S. Third Fleet, which participated in the American offensive against the Japanese home islands in the final months of the war, publicly stated in 1946 that "the first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment." The Japanese, he noted, had "put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before" the bomb was used. "
And so fdr would never consider ending the war before he got a chance to 'test' his new toy against a large number of human targets, no matter the cost. He had a population that he hated on racial terms anyway, so he wouldn't let the war end until he used it. He even made arrangements to have his lackey carry out his bloodthirsty wishes after he had gone to hell..... They knew it would work, but not under battle conditions. The difference was huge. ...
"the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender."Yes, it was good to have an unrestricted discussion of the pros and cons. What is your point? It was successful. No longer is that debatable.
.....
You cry and cry for "facts," then deny and dismiss at every turn.....
You mention Dwight Eisenhower being opposed to using the bomb. Was he never wrong?....
I have been very clearly advocating all along for many fewer deaths......
Why do advocate so many more deaths?
...ACTUALLY...
No historic fact baby, but you don't like the facts.Speculation
Hence, he quotes almost everybody on the planet it seems, except for the actual six people who actually had the power to end the war.No historic fact baby, but you don't like the facts.
No, speculation.No historic fact .......
