"why Hiroshima was necessary" Topic

One of the arguments for area bombing was that the Japanese industry was home based. In Downfall, it notes that after the March firebombing of Tokyo there no houses left in the destroyed area, but there was a forest of drill presses and other machines left it their remains.

It is a strange irony that there are millions of Japanese (and Americans and British for that matter) alive today because those two atomic bombs forestalled the invasion of the Japanese home islands. It would have been a prodigious and historic bloodbath.

B

The Japanese were indeed on the brink of economic catastrophe. At that time the nation was only marginally self-sufficient in food to start with. As the coastal shipping was brought to a stand still (roving USN fighter sweeps will do that), the ability to move food from the agricultural regions to the cities completely failed.

Famine was coming. Millions would have died.

The Japanese government could hardly have cared less. Civilian losses were not their concern. They were arming women and children with pointed sticks and training them to charge US Marines on the beaches!

As others have noted, even AFTER the SECOND bomb had been dropped, the military members of the cabinet would not vote to accept surrender, and hard liners even attempted a coup to stop the broadcast of the Emperor's message to the people requiring them to cease fighting.

The Soviets were indeed duly impressed by the bomb. And that possibility was mentioned at the highest levels. But US policy at that time was trying to get the Soviets IN to the war against Japan, not scare them away. We continued lend lease shipments after V-E day, including modern fighters and bombers, and notably including hundreds of landing craft, in an effort to keep them to their word that they would enter the war against Japan within 3 months of the end of the fighting in Europe. And it worked … the Germans surrendered (to the Soviets) on May 9 (Moscow time), and the Soviets attacked Japan on August 9.

To suggest that neither invasion nor the bomb was needed to get the Japanese to surrender is simply not true. To suggest that we did it to keep the Soviets out of Japan is also simply not true.

Japan could have accepted US surrender terms before the bomb. They did not. We dropped the bombs in a last bid effort to convince them to accept surrender before the invasion. It worked.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Ike, McArthur, and Truman all feared the possibility of postwar insurgencies in Germany and Japan. They believed that the best way to prevent them was to bring so much death and destruction down on the German and Japanese peoples that it would forever take the fight out of them. They were right.

BTW, it's debatable as to whether many people, if anyone at the time thought the A-bomb was anything more than just a really, really big bomb. It could accomplish in one drop what would take 100s of B-29s days even weeks to do.

It was only later after 1000s started dying from radiation exposure that some people began to question the need for the bombs, as if that makes a difference. Do we really believe that someone dying from radiation poisoning suffers more than one who dies from 3rd degree complete body burns received from an incendiary bomb-created firestorm?

I'd still like someone to stand up and say that he personally would be wholly prepared to die right away to spare the enemy.

Nobody ever does. It's always other people's lives they think should have been sacrificed to spare the Japanese.

Dear 4th Cuirassier

They never will. That's because they really don't care, it's only a stalking horse They don't even care about the Japanese. What they are trying to do is establish an aura of moral superiority to attack what others hold dear with impunity.

Without commenting on what has been discussed in the thread I linked to previously, I will say OSchmidt has pretty much hit that nail full force on the head!

Excellent response Otto.

Dear Chucullain

Thank you.

Dear List

In a way this is intolerable and some historical and philosophical points should be introduced.

You cannot argue from potential. To say one of the Japanese might have cured cancer argues an unknown. One of them might have inveted a plague there was no cure. Same for those who say that their dad would have been killed. You don't know that he would have, no matter the likelihood, and again, it's arguing potential. It's a weak argument all the way around.

If you argue from numbers and 20-40,000 Japanese were killed. You can argue that if we had to invade Japan, we would have taken 500,000 killed. The Japanese military would probably have 200,000 killed and the civilian deaths run into the 2-3 million range so it's 40,000 against 2,700,000 total. that's 1.48% of the casualties of the total. Mercifull indeed, all the way around! If you want to take the poor argument of potential, how many artitsts, poets, farmers, literati, doctors, lawyers and Indian chiefs would have been killed in that greater number of 2,700,000 to 3,700,000? So what is better that the 40,000 were killed or that 2,700,000 were saved to BE doctors, lawyers etc. Potential can work both ways.

Third, the historical facts are incontrovertable. Many in the Japanes Military did not want to surrender even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were several plots afoot to stage a coup, and one of them came off, which included imprisoning the Emperor. So much for Japanese reverence for their traditions. There had been a peace cabinet trying to find a way to peace for months. The chief obstacle was NOT Hirohito or the United States, it was that the Japanese knew they would all be assassinated if the Military found out about it, and Emperor removed to even more powerless figurehead as he was.

The Atom Bomb rocked even the military back on it's heels for a moment and was such an extraordinary circumstance that it gave Hirohito and the cabinet a moment where the Military could be neutralized (but only for a moment!) The bomb gave Hirohito the moment to intervene and pin the generals ears back, and hold them to account, and announce that it was his desire to make peace no matter what.

The words he used "I cannot allow my poor people to make any more sacrifices" or something like that, and it set the Generals on their heels because their motivating ideology had been the self-immolation in sacrifice, allegedly for the Emperor, and not the object of that sacrifice was saying No more, it is useless sacrifice for nothing.

And the Generals still wanted to fight on, and there were the attempted revolts.

The fact is that peace was made, and 2,900,000 (or therebouts)lives were saved, and THAT is an unqualified good.

Just wanted to point out that N. Korea has been blockaded in near-famine conditions for 60 years now and hasn't collapsed, to the contrary it has had three peaceful government transitions. And if what I have read is correct most North Koreans believe they are better off than the rest of the world.

Well … again, from a Grunt's POV, I'd much rather sacifice enemy lives. Than the lives of my men and comrades … call me old school.

"Same for those who say that their dad would have been killed. You don't know that he would have, no matter the likelihood, and again, it's arguing potential. It's a weak argument all the way around."

I don't consider a guy saying, "Well, if my Dad had gone in with the invasion I most likely wouldn't be here, so I for one am glad they dropped the bomb!" an argument in any way. It's just how those fellows feel (myself included). It doesn't justify anything except in a very personal sense.

Carry on…

OSchmidt, well and eloquently stated. BTW I was of those that had made the "my father might have been killed" statements and you are correct it is as much a weak argument. I doff my cap to you sir.

Regardless, the choice to drop the A-bombs was the correct and best option at the time and history has borne that out. End of debate.

Dear Kallman

But wait. The forensics of debate is one thing, but it does not vitiate the personal angst of postulating the death of a loved father. One must always account for emotion, if only because if the invasion had taken place and if your father had died, you would not be alive . That is not an irrelevant or inconsequential consideration.

To make it so commits the first small sin on the slippery slope to deciding who is important in this world and who the world can do without. Thus, logic may be absolute and rigorous, pure human compassion cannot exist that way and life without empathy, sympathy, and compassion is hellish. This is why we strain mightily to mitigate with mercy the dictates of the law, and shudder with remorse when we must decide the lesser of two evils. In this case let us say the 40,000 and the 2.900,000. Would that we did not have to chose either but … that is not the way of the world.

While the preservation of the live of a family member who also engenders our own is an argument from potential in this case, nevertheless we cannot blithely dismiss it. If we do we set ourselves on the road to becoming monsters. Better we should not have to make the decision at all, which means to not lock ones self into an ideological, social, and cultural position< such that one cannot get out of it. Better to not have wars at all, but if one has them one has to limit the goals and means and passions.

What we have gotten into here, particularly is an intellectual minefield with no maps, gear or knowledge. It is not a question of a choice between good and evil, but the exponentially more complicated question of a choice of the lesser of two evils, and the greater of two goods.

That can never work out well, for one is doomed. One must choose evil (even though it is the lesser evil) or one must choose the greater good, but in so doing you cannot have both goods which would be best, and you therefore must have less than all the good one could- which-- is evil.

Dear OSchmidt,

You sir must love argument. From the above however I am not sure if are following a Toulmin or Rogerian style of debate. While your previous posting was as clear as crystal this one is so convoluted and twisting as to be as clear as Mississippi mud!

I will diagram your argument later.

If ONE – just ONE – AMERICAN would have died invading Japan – and for the 11th Airborne, expected casualties were 95% – then the bomb was 100% worth if – let all those Jap SOBs burn in hell. And, for the record, the Japanese ISSUED the order to execute EVERY US, British, Australian, and Dutch PoW in Japan or elsewhere. The ONLY thing that stopped its 100% implementation [and plenty were executed including hundreds sent into a stinking coal mine to work and then the Japs collapsed the mountain on them] was the bomb being dropped. SCREW every singe Jap – they started the war, WE finished it. PERIOD – THAT IS what happened, and it was 100% justified- PERIOD, END OF DISCUSSION.