"why Hiroshima was necessary" Topic

link

Review of a book investigating why Japanese soldiers and civilians preferred suicide to surrender on Okinawa

The bomb saved my life. My Dad was a Marine sniper/scout scheduled for advance landing in Japan with a 17 minute life expectancy after his first shot. So I have noproblem with the bombings that ended the war.

So Paul the family of the guy who could have cured cancer had top take the hit instead? Think before you engage.

Hiroshima was necessary so people could have flame wars on TMP some 70 years later.

Sorry – not biting today.

The family or the guy it matters. And I am with Paul my dad was an Engineer training for the south island invasion. I vote bomb.

I watched once an American documentary where it was said the bomb was a demostration of power to the whole world and to Russia more specifically, that military Japanese class had already been taking steps to surrender after Russian Army attack to Japan.
So it was not necessary to end the war but for something more political and less ethical.

I vote bomb also. My father was in advanced infantry training when the war ended. He ended up in Italy instead of the Pacific. Blew up a house with a mortar in 1946 in what is now Yugoslavia because people would still take pot shots at the soldiers.

Invasion was calculated to produce 400,000 casualties for the invaders and two million dead Japanese. Who knows how many would result from air and sea blockade. In terms of human life it was, perhaps, the best way.

Yup, was the correct thing to do for the Japanese as well. It certainly ended up saving lives. Does anyone in their right mind think the Japanese would have taken FEWER casualties if we had invaded?

Also, the graphic demonstration of the weapon's power is what kept Stalin in check in Europe (the KGB/GRU archives make that abundantly clear).

This revisionist hand wringing about it is abysmally stupid and devoid of historical merit.

Popcorn alert. Have you ever noticed it is never writers from any of the countries Japan occupied that think the bomb was a bad idea. And what about all those children who didn't get to grow up or go to school. Because of Japanese policy. How many doctors was that? War is a terrible thing, if it shorted the war by an hour good thing. I think sometimes as we push paper and lead, we forget about the blood and the dead. And now back to you regular BS.

"So Paul the family of the guy who could have cured cancer had top take the hit instead? Think before you engage."

What, you think a Japanese man in 1945 would have cured Cancer where 21st century medicine with Hundreds of Billions of dollars and legions of Harvard and Johns Hopkins trained Cancer Researchers have failed?

Why not just boast this mythical man would have achieved world peace while extinct plesiosaurs flew out if his butt?

Amen, Cosmic.

I'm another one who wouldn't be here to debate it if the bomb hadn't been dropped. It was the right move. And not only did it save the lives of all those who would have died in an invasion, but it probably saved millions more in the decades to come. Does anyone honestly think that if no nuclear weapons had been used during WWII that everyone would have refrained from trying them out in the following Cold War? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrifying enough that they probably saved us from destroying ourselves later on.

Scott we also would not have those cool paper houses, without the bomb. Yes I am that shallow.

"The bomb saved my life. My Dad was a Marine sniper/scout scheduled for advance landing in Japan with a 17 minute life expectancy after his first shot. So I have noproblem with the bombings that ended the war."

The start of world war 2 saved my life. Otherwise my mother wouldnt have been deported and would not have met my dad. Is Hitler now a good person?

You see, your argument is obviously flawed. It's simple: the unborn children of the dead cannot argue against your statement.

Decebalus maybe your the only good thing to come out of WW2. ;)

The big lie isn't that the bomb was necessary but that it was necessary to invade Japan at all. The country was starving to death, would have been little or no threat to its neighbours within months and could have been easily neutralised with existing conventional means and at minimal losses.

You can make arguments to support the political significance of the bomb 'demonstration' to the Soviet Union but I don't think that was the main reason at the time. The political leadership wanted the war over and as quickly as possible.

I'm afraid too many reasons given above are just plain 'revenge thinking' wrapped up in dubious history.

Something that people seem to forget is that even "if" the invasion was successful, and it probably would have been but at a staggering cost in lives on both side, there was still the mop ups, occupation, and eventual rebuilding that would've had to have been done. The price for all would've been too astronomical in terms of lives, blood, material, labor, money, etc…. We would've held a destroyed desolate land full of starving people in our hands…..then what?…

Glildas you are, right but what would have happened to Allied POWs and occupied China while the Japanese are wasting away. Japanese policy harsh under best conditions. Worse while mama and papa eating dirt.

Now the real problem facing the world today. How many shooters for JFK and has anybody gamed it on the table. I'll hang up and listen.

Seems to me the math is irrefutable. No bombs would mean an invasion that kills enormously more people, Japanese civilians emphatically included.

It may have also been intended to intimidate the Russians. So what? That would be an insufficient reason by itself, but a perfectly valid secondary motive for what had already been done to end the war quickly and at a lower cost in lives.

Gild as that is Silly. Japan ' s population had dropped and none of our bombing touched their food production ability.

If you read Japan ' s own internal documentation at the time it was clear they had no intention of surrendering as long as they could come to grips with the americans. It was the aspect of annihilation without battle that finally convinced them.

It is perfectly clear in their own words. Anything else is wishful thinking and crass revisionism to fit a political perspective.

Also it did not have to be intended to influence Stalin in order to have that effect. However, it was discussed that the demonstration strike (s) might have that effect at the highest levels in Washington.

> How many shooters for JFK and has anybody gamed it on the table. I'll hang up and listen.

Red Dwarf has the DEFINITIVE answer for that question.

As for the rest of this thread, its a real hoot guys.

The whole "The invasion was unnecessary" argument ignores the fact that necessary or not the invasion WAS going to take place in early November of 1945. The ONLY thing that was going to stop it was Japan's surrender. The plans had been made, some of the forces were already in motion. Large military operations have a momentum of their own. Add in the fact that the civilian populations of all the Allied nations wanted this OVER with NOW. Politically as well as militarily it was simply impossible to stop the invasion unless Japan surrendered. And without the atomic bombings Japan was not going to surrender before November

So you justify the bomb and invasion simply because the US generals had got their strategy wrong, or may have got it wrong ? Hardly a convincing argument is it ?

Japan's food reserves were very poor after a very bad harvest and the need to ship supplies to troops overseas while getting very little of the food normally imported from China and Korea – which was lost to allied interdiction. Japan was not self sufficient in food even before the war.

I would hardly expect evidence that the US generals had read the situation wrong to be found by them after the occupation – to expect otherwise would be naïve in the extreme.

I am not arguing that the alternatives to the bomb were any prettier or less harmful to the Japanese, indeed, they may have been more so. I only argue that the invasion was NOT necessary – politically desirable and popular, yes – but not necessary.

This is an example of 20/20 hindsight History.

Today we know all the facts and the results of the bombing To us it is "generally" a historical argument where our own opinions background and emotions are coupled with contemporary morality that agrees that the Atomic Bomb is not a good thing.

We have the documents that show the thinking on both sides including some evidence from the enemy side that suggests that surrender was possible without a bomb .

Then we combine all of these to pontificate on what we think "should have" happened back in 1945 with myriads of facts and evidence to support our view.

In order to understand history it is necessary to go back to the time of the events and to examine the facts and contemporary public attitudes that were available to the decision makers at that time .

Let us take the opposite view and say that the US leadership decided not to drop the bomb and the invasion goes on resulting in the expectant high casualties to both sides Eventually the war ends. A few years later on intrepid reporters discover that a superbomb existed that could have avoided all the casualties and ended the war earlier. Now we would be arguing why the US did not drop the bomb.

Contemporary documents and surviving media suggests the combined decision of both the leadership ( military and civilian) and public opinion, once they learned about the bomb, was overwhelming approval. There were very few people that expressed opposition.

Considerations concerning morality or the effect on future history were not factors They were glad that a long brutal war was over and that the boys would becoming home. That too is history

If the bombs had not been dropped and a blockade emplaced I can just see the arguments we would have had instead. "Why didn't the US drop the bomb and end the war, instead they STARVED those poor people…"

"The big lie isn't that the bomb was necessary but that it was necessary to invade Japan at all. The country was starving to death, would have been little or no threat to its neighbours within months and could have been easily neutralised with existing conventional means and at minimal losses."

The invasion of Japan was absolutely necessary. After six years of war the world was exhausted and the civilian population would not let it go on much longer. Even in the US, least effected by the war, the people were tired to the point it was becoming difficult to raise money through bonds. The idea that they were neutralized and not a threat to their neighbors is not sustainable. Look what happened in Iraq post 1991. Even though Iraq was neutralized and not a threat to her neighbors, the sanctions fell apart almost over night, she was rebuilding her military, and within a decade would have been a threat again. Only the second invasion stopped that.

Now consider trying the same thing against Japan, with WWII technology, and two superpowers. How long would that neutralization have lasted? On top of which you'd be asking the various navies to spend months or years sitting on station maintaining the blockade of Japan.

The Japanese invade Pearl Harbor, unprovoked, kill thousands including civilian; we know they were not going to surrender, heck they had to drop 2 bombs, yeah I say drop it. Drop a third if nesessary! You think for 1 second they wouldn't have dropped one on New York city if they had the technology instead of us? They were sending thier own pilots (Kamizaes) into our battleships. They had no regard for thier own lives, you think they would have had any regard for ours? We couldn't sit back and wait for them to decide when they were ready to surrender. It had to end.

Rallynow started a similar thread in August. So I'm not going to take the bait today, simply post the link to the other thread:

TMP link

The bomb ended the war without requiring an invasion. Also keep in mind that the decision makers of the time did not understand the complete effects of the bomb -- to them, and for years afterwards, it was just a more explosive device.

Any argument that argues "what might have been" is just alternative history speculation that cannot be proven.

Without the A-bomb, Stalin would try to WW3 conquer whole continental Europe after USArmy withdrawal (say 1947).

I hope that would cause A-bombing of Moscow (in say 1948) and dissolution of USSR half a century earlier, freedom for Central and Eastern Europe (esp for my homeland, Poland but also for all opressed nation incl. Russians), no proxy war in Africa and Asia, slow and reasonable decolonisation (so no mobutu Sese Seko etc), win for Kuomintang (so no risk of China-USA war), maybe no Israel-Arab conflict (as USA would keep tighter control), much less powerful islam fundamentalism etc.

Much better world, I suppose.

All of that for a cost of 5 millions of dead Japanese bombed out to stone age.
And nuclear destruction of Moscow (and Sankt Petersburg, I am afraid – Russians are stubborn).

As Toronto says it is too easy to pass judgement with 20/20 hindsight. What was known at the time by the American leadership? Saipan and Okinawa had shown the willingness of the Japanese to fight to the bitter end. There was no evidence at all that the Japanese would have surrender by starvation, and while the home islands could be subjected to a tighter blockade, the Imperial Army in China couldn't. The Soviets were dragging their feet, and even if they would have had launched their own attack most American planners thought it would have stopped short of a winning-war committment by their part, probably limiting themselves to operations in Korea and Manchuria. Meanwhile, the Chinese, despite the influx of modern weapons, hadn't made any inroads against the Japanese Army; not only that, but the Japanese had already shown that they still could mount and launch successful offensives against the Chinese.

In the light of the evidence available both Operation Olympic and the Atomic Bombs made sense. Actually, most American planners didn't know for sure that the bombs would turn out into a sudden death victory. They were pretty confident that the Japanese would continue to fight and that Olympic would be necessary after all.

A blockade would have been worse for the Japanese, and their army would have starved LAST.

The use of atomic weapons was the logical conclusion of WW2 era strategic bmbing. Arguably it was only nuclear weapons which made strategic bombing into a war winning weapon, and which did not require the use of thousands of heavy aircraft for years of attritional bombing.

Bombing cities was what people did in the 1930s and 40s, and the stated intention to go on bombing cities with nuclear weapons kept the peace (after a fashion) for decades thereafter.

Not very nice, but there you go. No-one said war was nice.

(sigh) Love revisionist history, as already well stated the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was the least of many other evils. The bombings saved millions of lives in the longer scope of events. Taken in context of the times those in the know were not even sure that either atomic bomb would work and they of course knew almost nothing at the time about the long term effects of radiation. As someone else already stated they just thought is was an extremely powerful bomb. I have stated on another similar thread that the firebombing of Japanese military and civilian centers did far more damage and killed far more people than the dropping of the A-Bombs.

When they were both still living I asked my mother and father about how they felt about the bombings. My father was in the process of his entire B-24 Wing being moved from England to the Pacific when they heard about the Japanese surrender. Both of my parents thought it was a good thing. After all Japan had attacked us.

Moral of the story, do not start a war with a country with more economic and industrial resources than you have if you are not prepared to reap the consequences. Perhaps the question needs to be asked as to why the Japanese leaders thought taking on the United States was a viable plan? After Midway the Japanese were always behind the eight ball and knew it. The only reason Japan lasted as long as it did after going to war against the United States was because Roosevelt agreed with Churchill that Germany had to be dealt with first.

The BIG question is, would America use the bomb today to save Japan from China.
I'm in the camp of 'is there a $ in it for big business'
And no matter hind site and what ifs, the use of the bomb was a crime, a crime to humanity by humanity, and we are all poorer for it, yes it saved some and it killed some, but in dropping it man found a way to destroy its self, don't think termites have the capacity to be that stupid.
I myself am not a proponent of peace-nik idealism (see my comments elsewhere here on TMP) but I try to not be unfair (failing miserably :) and the mass death of 200000 saving the hypothetical mass death of say 3000000 is not the right analogy. In Vietnam the US had 52000 odd dead as opposed to millions by the Vietnamese and it was a lose for the US. Body count is not the way to treat the tragedy of war.
Again just my views and those that did live and those of you who are the offspring of these men, I say god bless but remember it was not a shiny moment in human history when we allowed the bomb to drop, as there were many who did not have the opportunity to be as we be.
cheers and reflection.

I've said this before here. From 1932 to 1945 up to 5% of the planetary population was extinguished in war. The A-Bomb ended that.

My father was a Pharmacist Mate/medic on a APD-Imperial Japanese targeted Medics/Corpsmen. Kamikazi tactics were shifted against troopships per their documentation. Read Kogun by Cox about IJ invasion preperations.

This has been debated before here and numerous other forums.

Check Alternate History forums for what would have happened if we didn't drop it.

"The Japanese invade Pearl Harbor, unprovoked, kill thousands including civilian" = They made a warcrime, lets do the same.

"we know they were not going to surrender, heck they had to drop 2 bombs, yeah I say drop it. Drop a third if nesessary!" = If we do something wrong, lets do it one more time.

" You think for 1 second they wouldn't have dropped one on New York city if they had the technology instead of us?" =
Perhaps they would have done more war crimes, so lets do some murdering too.

"They were sending thier own pilots (Kamizaes) into our battleships. They had no regard for thier own lives, you think they would have had any regard for ours?" = If someone treats himself bad, you can do bad things to him too.

You have noticed the logic behind your arguments?

"And no matter hind site and what ifs, the use of the bomb was a crime, a crime to humanity by humanity, and we are all poorer for it, yes it saved some and it killed some, but in dropping it man found a way to destroy its self, don't think termites have the capacity to be that stupid."

Wow. Talk about assigning a moral value to an inanimate object…

Good Lord. You must be kidding.

Geez doc, didn't you think that by posting the link, that there wouldn't be a firestorm of comments both for and against? Being a former Grunt I certainly fall in the for side of the topic. For a number of reasons. Many already mentioned. But certainly as we see, this kicked up a lot of pro-US vs. anti-US and devolve into polaried conversation to the extremes. Just like we saw on another post, with the mention the SS …

The big lie isn't that the bomb was necessary but that it was necessary to invade Japan at all. The country was starving to death, would have been little or no threat to its neighbours within months and could have been easily neutralised with existing conventional means and at minimal losses.

They tried that with Germany in WWI.

Japan had to not only be beaten, but to fully acknowledge that it was beaten. There had to be no question about it, and no chance of another round.

Starvation would never have worked on Japan, any more than it would have worked on Nazi Germany -- which could just as easily have been blockaded into submission in 1945 as invaded. Militaristic societies only understand complete failure and submission. Surrender on terms is just a pause until the next round for them.

Oh Lordy are we doing this AGAIN!!!! We just did this a month or so ago! In my memory we've done this four times before that!

What's done is done.

I see that the America haters have taken their imprimatura from Ultra modern to begin fanning out and infesting other boards with open season and no limit on people who just want to talk about the hobby, toy soldiers, and games.

Any moment I have no doubt we shall see The Mouth of Sauron show up.

I love that killing 200,000 with the bomb is immoral but letting 10 million starve is ok. The non-US combatants and civilians were dying at the rate of 100,000 a month. And the war in China and SE Asia would have continued. The day after the second bomb dropped was the first time the senior Japanese leaders met to discuss what terms to offer the Allies. Even then it took direct intervention by the Emperor to limit them to retaining the Throne. That night the army executed a coup by killing the CO of the Imperial Guard and attempting to seize the Emperor. It failed. Even after both bombs, the army still want to demand no occupation and the right to self disarmament. Suggest reading Richard Frank's Downfall.

I was going to say: 'Put me down as pro-bomb', but then I thought better of it.

I mean, what was I thinking? Dunno what came over me.
On reflection, what I meant to say was: 'Put me down as pro-bombs, plural'.

Lake District wildlife centre has got a Bald Eagle.
I have a sudden urge to drive over there and see if they'd let me high-five it.

Zargon….you are one funny guy. I want some of what you're smoking.

Must be nice to live in a country on the edge of the world with little to no international responsibilities with the luxury of sitting back and criticizing those who have to make the hard decisions.

Keep in mind that your revisionist, 20-20 hindsight view of history ignores that fact that we DID learn lessons that have prevented nuclear war and the use of nuclear weapons since 1945.

Blockade was never feasible. It would have cost a fortune to maintain and would have left the Japanese still undefeated and still capable if building rickets, ships and submarines. As was said earlier the Japanese army would have let the civilian population starve but fed the troops.

And what of the US . How possible would have been to keep the troops and sailors in arms though 46 and 47? As for the UK we were exhausted and bankrupt and would have followed the Burma campaign by invading Malaya. Why should the democracies sustain huge further casualties when there was a way to break Japan.
Using the bomb was strategically right, but more than that, it was morally right Japan had declared unrestricted war, had committed horrific crimes in Korea, Manchuria, China, Malaya, Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia as well as on numerous islands. The Japanese state had sponsored murder, theft rape, enforced prostitution, forced labour and medical experimentation.
In that situation all the allies considered that mass killing of enemy civilians was justified on the basis of ending the war more quickly. Civilians became a military target. They ceased to be legitimate targets when they had surrendered or fallen completely into the power of the allies.
Its easy to look back now and claim that the bombing of Germany or Japan was a crime, but that is to misunderstand the life or death struggle that was WW2

As mentioned above, read Downfall by Richard B Frank. One of the interesting things in Downfall is the newly declassified information that the US was intercepting and reading the Japanese internal communications, and new that there were no plans to surrender, and that the surrender approaches via the USSR were unauthorized, and when discovered were ordered to be stopped.

Also, any argument about the bombs that ignores the 30,000 – 100,000 (depending on sources) of Chinese and other Asians that were dying each month is assuming that Asians are somehow less important than Japanese. There is a reason the Chinese still hate Japan. I expect the cure for cancer was just as likely from one of those people.

If you are personally prepared to die right now, leaving your parents childless and your children fatherless, in order to spare the lives of the enemy, stand up. Right now. You're going to die right now to achieve this noble goal.

Nah. Thought not.

Having your cities burned to ashes from the air, despite your scary army, has cured both Germany and Japan of the mistaken belief that war is something that only happens to other people. They've been as good as gold since.