"Hiroshima" Topic

The hand wringing and indulgent moralizing about dropping the bomb are symptomatic of the rot in Western culture. .

………….

This belongs in the Blue Fez surely?

I recommend everyone read 'Downfall' for the definitive account (as far as I am concerned) of the dropping of the bomb. link

From my memory of reading the book, there were no official overtures for peace through the soviets. There was an unofficial approach, but once the Japanese government knew about this they shut this down. And, as the US had broken the Japanese codes, the US government knew that the peace approaches had been shut down.

The book documents the discussions and decisions by Truman, and provides a detailed look at all the options that Truman had.

There is no doubt that the Japanese had lost the war by the time we dropped the bomb. There is also no doubt that the Japanese government refused to accept that they'd lost.

Had we followed the suggestion of some people and simply blockaded the islands, how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions would have died of disease and starvation while the military hoarded every supply for the final defense of the homeland?

Also, imagine if anyone other than the Americans had the only nuclear bombs in 1945. Does anyone seriously think the Soviets wouldn't have occupied the rest of Europe under the threat of being able to nuke anyone who stood in their way with no threat of retaliation?

For those who have misinterpreted my post as being against the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, I will clarify.

My position is that the bombings were probably a necessary evil in that they did save lives overall.

However, I cannot see how they are something to be proud of or how they were a great victory in themselves. Defeating Japan was a great victory, but the bombings themselves were not. They were, however, a great international technological achievement, albeit one of a rather dark nature.

I doubt if anyone on here is "troubled by civilised nations standing up aggressively to Islamic fascists". Having fought against them and probably killed at least one, I certainly am not.

Jurgen

My post was not directed at you Jurgen. Please accept my apology.

Gray Bear,

No apology is necessary:).

Jurgen

My father in law was slated to be in the invasion after having been in Okinawa invasion. He was also in the first group in Japan after the bombs. He was glad to not have had to fight his way in but saw what it did. As others said, necessary evil.

"I for one, am proud that we dropped it and could stop the war, and I know that many of those cynics who sneer at the U.S. decision would not be around today to sneer if Imperial Japan or the Third Reich had developed it first."

Its a strange statement for me, that the bomb was not only a necessary evil but a thing, you can be proud of. Proud of mass killing including about a dozen US POWs. Sorry, but that sounds "cynic" to me.

But who am i to know, coming from a nation that lost the concept of national pride by mass murdering.

The argument, that the critics wouldnt be around has obviously no weight. Bad things dont become good by long time effects. No latin americans would be around without spanish colonialism. That doesnt make it good.

One quick bit that many of the "moralistics" seem to always overlook….

If Nazi Germany would've had this bomb, and able to make 3-4 of them, do you think they would've used it?

Damn right they would have…

Do you think they'd be "upset now" at having used it?

Not in the least….

Many people get to do their moralistic hand wringing because millions of young men put their lives on the line, on all fronts to beat this monster back to whatever hell it came from, and to give people nowadays the freedom to bemoan the fact that the bomb was used to save the skins of future generations….who wring their hands and bemoan using the bomb as "wrong"….

Ironically sad isn't it?

Moralizing is simply an attempt by people to prove how
"sensitive" and "caring and sharing" they are. This is nothing but self-righteousness of the people who like to gore other peoples Oxen. They are pure frauds and don't care the least for anyone but themselves. It's an attempt to say "Oh look how sensitive and caring and empathic I am, I am much more caring and sensitive and sympathetic and a better individual than YOU!" It's all hogwash.

If you are a historian you had better realize that you are nothing but a coroner of the crimes of humanity, and as far as this fallen world, "all of us are so far in that sin doeth pluck on Sin " Shakespeare, Richard III when Richard is contemplating murdering the princes in the tower."

The TRULY tragic thing was a store I have told here many times. When I was doing part time instructorizing at a college for my degree, I once had a girl who said (recall this is a college classe)

"I don't blame the Japanese for bombing us at Pearl Harbor, after all we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

After I explained the fallacy in her causality, she responded angrily. "Look I don't come here to have my belief's questioned. It doesn't matter what came first. The Japanese were right."

That's the type of people you're dealing with when you talk about not dropping the bomb.

As Sherman said "War is War and attempts to moderate it's savagery is like sending appeals to the thunderstorm."

As for the right or wrongness. Unfortunately she is now dead, but I would wish that all these people could have talked to the American nurses who were captured in the Phillipenes in 1942 and the hell on earth they endured for three years. They were all raped and beaten repeated, and several were raped to death by the Japanese.

Or the millions of Burmese, Thai, and other Asians who were killed in the support of building the railroad and as slave labor in the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity sphere. Talk to them and then come back and talk to us about racism.

Murphy,

The awfulness of the Nazi regime and their probable willingness to use atmic bombs does not have any bearing on the morality of the US use of them against Japan. You might want to think your argument through a little more clearly next time.

Jurgen

OSchmidt,

"Moralizing is simply an attempt by people to prove how
"sensitive" and "caring and sharing" they are. This is nothing but self-righteousness of the people who like to gore other peoples Oxen. They are pure frauds and don't care the least for anyone but themselves. It's an attempt to say "Oh look how sensitive and caring and empathic I am, I am much more caring and sensitive and sympathetic and a better individual than YOU!" It's all hogwash."

That is utter rubbish, as is the case with most generalisations.

Jurgen

They killed thousands, and saved millions.

It was done. It rapidly brought about Japan's surrender. May it never be used again.

The moral choice had been made by all belligerants long before the first A-Bomb was dropped. Totalitarian regimes didn't give too much of a about their enemies' civilians, for starters. They targeted civilian populations without any moral qualms. For democracies it took a little bit longer, but they also justified the destruction of civilian targets once they realized that the idea of precision bombing was unfeasible with the technical means that they had available at the time. In Europe, the Americans hold for a while to day bombing strategy, in hope they would be able to target German industries, while sparing the lives of German population. After several setbacks, they switch to area bombing, although they tried to sustain the fiction that German civilians caught in the middle were collateral damage. Its interesting to notice that wasn't the case when attacking Japanese cities: 10th Air Force didn't care about what could happen to Japanese civilians on the ground; its goal was to destroy Japan's will to fight on.

Advocates of area bombing in Britain and USA argued that the death of civilians was a legitimate war aim. Killing, maiming and leaving homeless German or Japanese civilians would hurt both countries economies, and therefore their ability to continue the war. Also, they hoped that it would provoke a backlash against German and Japanese governments, once their respective populations would realized that they couldn't protect them.

Once the first area bombing was implemented, the dropping of an A-Bomb was just a little step forward. Actually, when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected as potential targets for the bombing, the main concern in the minds of the planners was that both cities were more or less intact from bombing with conventional ammunition, and therefore they would be perfect test sites for checking the actual effects of an A-Bomb in a city. Mind that many people wasn't sure that it would be as powerful as claimed by its designers. After all, it wouldn't have been the first time that a "miracle weapon" would have been proved to be more pedestrian than miraculous.

There is another fact that should be taken in mind when analyzing the decision process: money. When a society at war sinks billions of hard currency into the development of a weapon, there will be an unstoppable drive to test the performance of that weapon in actual combat conditions. Otherwise, why would invest that much money into it if you are not decided to use it?

Finally, there was the experience of the war itself. American planners, based upon their experiences in Saipan, Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Manila, expected that an invasion of Japan's home islands would cost hundred of battle deaths to the invaders, and millions to the civilians. Moreover, while Japan, in hindsight, was on the brink of total collapse, America planners weren't sure that was the case. After all, the main Japanese forces, those in China, didn't look like they were about to yield anytime soon. Until June 1945, the US State Department was putting pressure on the Soviets to start operations against Japan, sooner rather than later.

Of course, McArthur opposed the whole idea. He didn't want anybody to steal what he imagined to be his greatest show: the conquest of Japan. He didn't show the same restrain -nor any moral anguish- eight years later, when he proposed Truman to use the Bomb against the Chinese, in Korea.

Was it something to be proud of? No, of course not. Was it a necessary evil? Perhaps. What it is sure is that at the time was regarded as just another tool in America's arsenal to be used in the war against a hated enemy.

That is utter rubbish, as is the case with most generalisations.

That's right, generalizations are rubbish. Oh, wait…

Besides they had it coming.

There is a lot of supposing going on. Suppose the Japanese were also working on their own A-bomb. The allies knew the Germans had sent fissionable material to Japan via U-boat. So if it took another year or two of war to take the Japanese islands would they have their own bomb? No one knew the counter-factual.

Mobius,

That is why the word "most" was in there;).

Jurgen

The awfulness of the Nazi regime and their probable willingness to use atmic bombs does not have any bearing on the morality of the US use of them against Japan. You might want to think your argument through a little more clearly next time.

Jurgen….why should I?…

Simply because had the Nazi's had the bomb, Moscow, London, and possibly NY/Wash. DC would've resembled Hiroshima and Nagasaki…and all of the people nowadays wringing their hands and going "ooooooh we shouldn't have done that", most of them wouldn't be here.

As for the morality of the US using it….They made the right decision….

My actual father, (aka "The Old Man"), was one of the very first US Army soldiers to land on "newly surrendered and occupied Japan" to help establish the occupation. The war was over and he came in locked and loaded as a lot of them REFUSED to quit.

Even after the bombs were dropped, the coup was tried, and the military wanted to go on….they were that fantatically suicidal….

The bombs stopped what would've been the greatest long term bloodbath in the history of mankind…

As soon as I saw this post, I knew it would devolve into a devisive and derisive situation … Sometimes guys I think some just post here to stir things up a bit … which is not always a good thing … The US will always be villified by some for dropping the A-bombs … Where many others, like me realized, it most likely saved a lot of lives. As odd as that may sound … And many of those were American lives … Also as noted here and I frequently say, war is a tragic, horrible, horendous, etc., event. We need to go no farther than the recent headlines in the media to validate that … And something we all need to realize … most likely no matter what any of us say, it will NOT change others' minds … And as adults we should realize that and cease lenghty verbal volleyball … Which IMO after awhile it no longer is a valid exercise …

Murphy,

You might do better to argue against what people post, rather than what you want them to have posted or against your own strawman argument.

As to why you might want to think your argument through somewhat better, it is because it was complete nonsense in that you were saying that bombing Japan was ok because the Germans would have bombed other people.

Jurgen

Just to clear up a few things.

1. Using a demonstration for the Japanese instead of dropping it on a city or provide a warning.

This proposal was turned over to the "Interim Committee" to study alternatives to using the bomb on a city. They decided against a demonstration for the following reasons.

a. To demonstrate it on a empty target or give a warning prior to its use, in or near Japan would allow the Japanese to move POWs to that location.

b. The possibility of the bomb not working which would result in steeling their resolve to fight.

c. These bombs are each essentially hand built and the few on hand needed to be conserved.

d. To demonstrate it on a remote island in the pacific would mean that somehow a Japanese delegation would have to be transported through Allied lines. It would be very difficult to arrange and would only prolong the war.

The committee recommended that the bomb be used as soon as one is ready. It should be used without warning. The weapon should be dropped on a dual purpose target such as one with a military base and a factory including the houses around the factory in order to kill as many factory workers as possible.

2. Casualties

A Joint Chiefs of Staff study in April 1945 offered a mathematical formula which 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. Admiral Chester Nimitz's staff estimated casualties at sea in the first thirty days of Olympic would be 5,000.

It is difficult to estimate the number of Japanese casualties for one or both operations. It would depend on the level of civilian participation in combat. But it is generally agreed the number would be in the millions.

President Truman met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior advisers in June 1945 to review the initial invasion plans. At least four different opinions emerged about potential casualties. These estimates for U.S. losses on Kyushu ranged from as low as 31,000 for just the first thirty days, to a total of about 280,000. Truman authorized the landing on Kyushu, but withheld his approval for Coronet.

3. Decision to drop.

There was really no decision to be made. The goal was to end the war as quickly as possible, by forcing the Japanese to unconditional surrender and minimize Allied casualties. If the bomb could do it then so be it.

4. At the time, the development of the atomic bomb was a very closely guarded secret known only to a few top officials outside the Manhattan Project. Planning for the invasion of Japan did not take its existence into consideration until after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

5. Very few people outside of the scientist who worked on the MP fully understood the radiation dangers of these weapons. To the military and most civilians, it was just another tool in the kit. So one aircraft with one bomb can destroy a city instead of a 1000 B-29s, then great lets use it.

If after dropping two atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war did not force their surrender, then planning for "Downfall" would go on. B-29 raids would continue and the Soviets would go on tearing through Manchuria and China. When the next bomb was ready, then drop it on another city and so on.

To show how naďve planners were about the atomic bomb, General Marshal was incorporating the bomb into the invasion. He proposed to use nine atomic bombs on the Japanese beach defenses and troop concentrations just prior to the American landings.

And This belongs in a war games board because…?

Can any of the half dozen editors toss this into the Blue Fez or,something? And yes, the Complaint button is not working (again).

Then don't read it. Don't let history in the way of historical gaming.

It's an appropriate discussion for a general WW2 forum. Since the war's end the atomic bomb has become a symbol of the ugly side of modern life so strong that few people can be objective about its use at the time. Studying history breeds cynicism.

"Thank God and Harry Truman."

Pijlie,

The dropping of the atom bombs happened in WW2; this is the WW2 Discussion Board.

Jurgen

Jurgen…

Plain and simple…

I've simply said that the Nazi's would of used it with no remorse….

And I've simply said that had they used it, and had they won, then the world we know of today would not be here…it would be something far worse….

And I've simply said that the majority of the "handwringers" and "social boo-hooers" of what happened, would sure as hell not be here either….

They often seem to forget that.

The Japanese, were part of the Axis, and they were all in the same boat and all deserved the same fate….total war and total defeat….

Here's my contribution.

YouTube link

Murphy,

In other words, you cannot make any logical connection between the likely willingness of the Nazis to use a weapon that they did not have and the morality of the use of that weapon by the USA against the Japanese.

Thank you for confirming that.

Jurgen

Just a point to consider:

If the Nazis had been able to produce an atom bomb and had used it against, for example, Moscow, but had still lost the war, does anyone believe that it would not have been added to the war crimes charges?

Jurgen

Things like that have historically been left to the purview of the victors … for better or worse …

Never said I was going to make a connection or had to make a connection Jurgen.

You are the one trying to force that, not me….

I personally feel the Japanese have been given a moral pass by the West because of the bombing.
-yeah it was wrong of the Japanese to kill and enslave all those millions of people but the real crime was the bombing-

"If the Nazis had been able to produce an atom bomb and had used it against, for example, Moscow, but had still lost the war, does anyone believe that it would not have been added to the war crimes charges?"

Well, they didn't charge the Nazis for unrestricted U-boat warfare…

Murphy,

You clearly did make a connection.

Jurgen

Well, they didn't charge the Nazis for unrestricted U-boat warfare…

I think they did charge Karl Doenitz with that very crime at Nuremberg. But his defense team had the perfect defense. It was no different than what the Americans did to the Japanese.

Murvihill,

Dönitz was charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing War Order No. 154 in 1939, and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942, not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine.

He was convicted of it but not sentenced for it:

"Dönitz is charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare contrary to the Naval Protocol of 1936 to which Germany acceded, and which reaffirmed the rules of submarine warfare laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930… The order of Dönitz to sink neutral ships without warning when found within these zones was, therefore, in the opinion of the Tribunal, violation of the Protocol… The orders, then, prove Dönitz is guilty of a violation of the Protocol… the sentence of Dönitz is not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare."

Jurgen

In other words, you cannot make any logical connection…

and then…

You clearly did make a connection…

Someone can't seem to make up their mind today…..

Excellent post, Rallynow. Thank you for your efforts!

Murphy,

You may want to note the importance of the word "logical" in understanding the difference between those two statements.

Jurgen

I personally feel the Japanese have been given a moral pass by the West because of the bombing.

Actually, I think the Japanese issued that pass to themselves and some folks have gone along with it. It's part and parcel of Japan's strange mixture of denial, selective amnesia, and misinformation regarding their role in the events of 1931-1945.

"Its a strange statement for me, that the bomb was not only a necessary evil but a thing, you can be proud of. Proud of mass killing including about a dozen US POWs. Sorry, but that sounds "cynic" to me.

But who am i to know, coming from a nation that lost the concept of national pride by mass murdering."

Decebelus, our different opinions are very representative of basic differences in public attitudes between the U.S. and Germany. We all know wars are horrible, but there is (in the U.S. view) such a thing as a "Good War", if it serves a greater purpose.

I am proud that in WW2, the U.S., after having resisted entering for years, finally intervened and served a key role in defeating Imperial Japan and the Third Reich. It wasn't seminars, or sit-ins, or demonstrations that ended these evil forces, it was use of force ourselves. I am well aware that U.S. intervention caused thousands of inadvertent casualties, and that's a shame. But overall, I am proud that we were a force for good, and WW2 is generally agreed upon in U.S. public opinion to be a "good war".

German public opinion doesn't really recognise a good war, and maintains a sort of wilfull blind eye to the fact that "good" regimes have to use force to defend themselves.

Please understand that I'm not defending violence and the horror inherent in war, but I am proud that my country is willing, when necessary, to intervene as a force for good, and to commit the resources to win necessary wars. Not all the wars we've fought have been "good", but the topic here is WW2, and that is, from a U.S. viewpoint, an incontrovertible "good war".

So to sum up: yes, I am proud of the U.S. program and decision to drop the Bomb. Both at the time, and in hindsight, it was the right decision. Would have been nicer if it wasn't necessary, but it was.

I believe that one reason Truman used it was because he wanted the Soviets to know that we had it and weren't afraid t use it.

It may have been ONE of the considerations, but not the major one.

Re: George MacDoald Fraser…

That said, George MacDonald Fraser, a screenwriter and author of the "Flashman" and other excellent historical fiction, who had also been an infantryman in WW2, wrote in his excellent memoir that he, and the soldiers he fought with, would have been against dropping the Bomb.

Tusca,
I generally agree with you, but in the edition of 'Quartered Safe Out Here' I've got, George MacDonald Fraser was very much in favour of dropping the Bomb.

You're both correct, I would say, though what Tuscaloosa was referring to was more of a what-if:

"The dropping of the bombs was a hideous thing, and I do not wonder that some of those who bore a part in it have been haunted by it all their lives. If it was not barbaric, the word has no meaning.

I led Nine Section for a time; leading or not, I was part of it. They were my mates, and to them I was bound by ties of duty, loyalty, and honour. Now, take Nine Section as representing those Allied soldiers who would certainly have died if the bombs had not been dropped (and remember that Nine Section might well have been not representatives, but the men themselves). Could I say, yes, Grandarse or Nick or Forster were expendable, and should have died rather than the victims of Hiroshima? No, never. And that goes for every Indian, American, Australian, African, Chinese and other soldier whose life was on the line in August, 1945. So drop the bomb.

And it was not only their lives, as I pointed out to my antibomb disputant. To reduce it to a selfish, personal level…if the bombs had been withheld, and the war had continued on conventional lines, then even if I'd failed my board and gone with the battalion into Malaya, the odds are that I'd have survived: 4 to I actuarially speaking, on the section's Burma fatalities. But I might have been that one, in which case my three children and eight grandchildren would never have been born. And that, I'm afraid, is where all discussion of pros and cons evaporates and becomes meaningless, because for those eleven lives I would pull the plug on the whole Japanese nation and never even blink. And so, I dare suggest, would you. And if you wouldn't, you may be nearer to the divine than I am but you sure as hell aren't fit to be parents or grandparents.

It comes to this, then, that I think the bombing was right? On those two counts, without a doubt. If it wasn't, what were we fighting for? And then I have another thought.

You see, I have a feeling that if—and I know it's an impossible if—but if, on that sunny August morning, Nine Section had known all that we know now of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and could have been shown the effect of that bombing, and if some voice from on high had said: "There—that can end the war for you, if you want. But it doesn't have to happen; the alternative is that the war, as you've known it, goes on to a normal victorious conclusion, which may take some time, and if the past is anything to go by, some of you won't reach the end of the road. Anyway, Malaya's down that way…it's up to you", I think I know what would have happened. They would have cried "Aw, fook that!" with one voice, and then they would have sat about, snarling, and lapsed into silence, and then someone would have said heavily, "Aye, weel," and got to his feet, and been asked "W'eer th' 'ell you gan, then?" and given no reply, and at last the rest would have got up, too, gathering their gear with moaning and foul language and ill-tempered harking back to the long dirty bloody miles from the Imphal boxes to the Sittang Bend and the iniquity of having to do it again, slinging their rifles and bickering about who was to go on point, and "Ah's aboot 'ed it, me!" and "You, ye , ye're knackered afower ye start, you!" and "We'll a' git killed!", and then they would have been moving south. Because that is the kind of men they were. And that is why I have written this book."

Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser.

So to sum up: yes, I am proud of the U.S. program and decision to drop the Bomb. Both at the time, and in hindsight, it was the right decision. Would have been nicer if it wasn't necessary, but it was.

I totally Agree with you tuscaloosa … [which does not always happen …]

Cheers Steve,

Thanks for the reminder.

Whoo-Hoo 3rd page.