"U.S. Planned to Drop 12 Atomic Bombs on Japan" Topic

"American military archives reveal that if the Japanese had not surrendered on August 15, 1945, they would have been hit by a third and potentially more powerful atomic bomb just a few days later and then, eventually, an additional barrage of up to 12 further nuclear attacks.

Documents highlighted during commemorations to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9, which forced the end of World War II, show the determination of the United States to make Japan surrender unconditionally.

In the spring of 1945, the U.S. Army set up a special target committee to debate key Japanese cities to attack as officials believed their regime had already made it perfectly clear they were not willing to surrender at any price…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Can never understand why the first one at least wasn't exploded in a relatively unpopulated area within full view of a city and the clear message 'the next one hits a city'. Then you hit a city.

I think there was a fair bit of ignorance about what an atom bomb would actually do: it is one thing to hear 'one bomb = one city destroyed' and another thing to actually see it in practice. With so many cities destroyed by multiple thousand bomber raids, I doubt that the idea of 'wasting' one of the few bombs they had ready to go was one that anyone seriously thought about at the time.

"Can never understand why the first one at least wasn't exploded in a relatively unpopulated area within full view of a city and the clear message 'the next one hits a city'. Then you hit a city."
Because after 3 1\2 years of war youre done firing warning shots?

The Germans should thank their lucky stars it wasn't ready before April 45.

No, there was a racial element to the Pacific theatre.

Even greater teeth gnashing and hair pulling would have gone on to even "consider" bombing Germany, never mind actually doing it.

(Though admittedly, Dresden might have cracked that door open a bit).

"No, there was a racial element to the Pacific theatre."

No ethnic/racial issues in the European Theater. Just ask the Poles, Jews, Slavs, Russians…

Seriously, my reading of material of and by allied troops entering Germany has shown a rather open disdain towards enemy civilians and troops alike. I don't know if that was just bravado showing up in post-war writings or if it was really the case. The allies did a pretty bang up job when bombing the occupied countries just to impede and kill Germans. Civilian Germany took a pretty good pasting as well. As to "the bomb", that always makes for an interesting what if.

Since they only had three prototypes available at the time this article is clearly bull.
It was actually several months after the war before enough plutonium was available to build the second production "Fat Man".
There does seem to have been some diplomatic hints to the Russians that more bombs were available though.

What Rabbit said. In my limited reading, the US was getting nervous after the 1st drop – they knew they only had 2 more. If the Japanese didn't surrender then, the alternatives were all horrible. Wait to build more bombs? Invade?

I can't understand a leadership group that needed to have a second city destroyed before they would consider any surrender. Even then, many in the government had difficulty accepting the concept of surrender. It was a tragedy all the way around.

Can never understand why the first one at least wasn't exploded in a relatively unpopulated area within full view of a city and the clear message 'the next one hits a city'. Then you hit a city.

I sorta feel the same way. But I think the fact that we only had two, and since Truman wasn't trying to impress the Japanese people, but rather the militant generals and the Emperor. And what Langabod and Jeffrey said.

I dunno Andrew. Racism played a huge role in WWII. We didn't round up German/American civilians and put them into "relocation" camps. Check out some of these posters (Yikes!):

link

Now, this next link is from National Lampoon Magazine. It's a Japanese World War II comic. If you haven't seen it, it's hysterical, and even though it's fiction, I would not be surprised if that's how they saw us.

link

Because after 3 1\2 years of war you're done firing warning shots?

Yep, especially after the US losses on places like Okinawa and Iwo …

I can't understand a leadership group that needed to have a second city destroyed before they would consider any surrender. Even then, many in the government had difficulty accepting the concept of surrender.

Case in point … even after a second bomb some of them didn't want to surrender. And estimates of losses of a US/Allied Invasion of the Japanese mainland was well over 1 million. Not to mention, the Japanese planned on fighting to the last man, woman and child … The mathematics of warfare is bleak. Lose hundreds of thousand vs. millions.

No, there was a racial element to the Pacific theatre.

Suggested reading : "War Without Mercy" …

No ethnic/racial issues in the European Theater. Just ask the Poles, Jews, Slavs, Russians…

Seriously, my reading of material of and by allied troops entering Germany has shown a rather open disdain towards enemy civilians and troops alike. I don't know if that was just bravado showing up in post-war writings or if it was really the case. The allies did a pretty bang up job when bombing the occupied countries just to impede and kill Germans. Civilian Germany took a pretty good pasting as well

There certainly was enough hatred to go around on all fronts. An interesting fact. The Bishop of Berlin had to get special dispensation from the Pope for 90,000 German females. That had been raped, some repeatedly by the Russians during the Battle of Berlin. Which is "almost" understandable after what the Germans did in Russia. In either case I can't find it justifiable at all but certainly "explainable". Man's inhumanity to man. And it still continues today in certain locales on the planet.

The proposed invasion of Japan, Operation Olympic and others estimated over a million US casulties alone. They made enough purpe hearts with that planning in mind. Since 1945 they US has been issuing out those same purple hearts that were stamped out in 1945 and I understand that they still have lots left over.

If the invasion had to procede, I doubt that there would have been enough surviving Japanese to breed.

How many of us would not be here today, because our father or grandfather would have been one of those casulties?

Exactly … well said.

troopwo
Me for one.

Fatman

Fatman, me too.

Myself also, my Dad Army Air Corp stationed in Hawaii was told of his pending transfer to the infantry for the
invasion of Japan.

In re: to the racial aspect, I was referring to the "yellow skinned, buck toothed, eyeglass wearing" propaganda that was being waged thanks to Hollywood, et. al.

I certainly realize the recial elements to the ETO, but innnn re: to the PTO, as it was more one on one/personal on a soldier to soldier basis since (enemy) civilians were rarely encountered in those situations.

Regarding the "racial" aspect, the Japanese considered all of the people's against whom they initiated war, including Caucasians, to be racially inferior. Their brutal treatment of civilians (ex. Nanking), POWs (ex. Bataan) etc practically guaranteed little sympathy. Japan started an especially savage war in the Pacific (Nanking, Baatan, etc). The United States was under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to waste the precious blood of her sons in a bloody invasion of Japan's home islands to end the war. The U.S. possessed a weapon to compel Japan's surrender while sparing her own men. The blood of the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are on the hands of the Emperor, Hirohito and the war party, not the U.S.

"We didn't round up German/American civilians and put them into "relocation" camps."
Incorrect. My Grandfather spent several years in internment camp. He immigrated from Germany in 1907.
While two of his sons were fighting for the U.S. Army in Italy.

I've heard similar stories. Many don't know of the German and even Italian internments …

The blood of the dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are on the hands of the Emperor, Hirohito and the war party, not the U.S.

I agree completely … many still don't understand that …

The atomic bomb project was started for use against the Germans. It's only because the Germans surrendered before the atomic bombs were ready that they were spared the atomic bomb.

The Japanese were also working on an atomic bomb. Where would they have exploded their first bomb to impress the Americans? On some vacant atoll in the middle of the Pacific as a demonstration of their power or in Los Angeles or San Francisco?

Every day WWII continued thousands of Americans and Allies were in Japanese POW camps being starved and tortured. Do you think they wanted demonstration attacks or real attacks?

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

I too agree that ultimately, the bomb should have demonstrated and that the invite was out there for the Japanese to witness it for themselves, but since nothing came of it left Truman et al w/very little wiggle room.

That it had to be used a second time though is completely on the shoulders of the Japanese government.

Not mentioned in the article, but more interesting IMHO, is that if Japan had not surrendered after the Nagasaki bombing, Marshall was considering using the remaining A bomb builds for tactical rather than strategic use.

The last two cities on the A bomb list, Niigata and Kokura would have been destroyed by conventional B29 attacks, so few civilians would have been spared that way. It was estimated that eight or nine weapons might be ready in time for Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, in late 1945, and three weapons would been allocated to pave the way for each of the three invading corps to destroy the beach defences, knock out in-land reserves and isolate the battlefield from Japanese reinforcements.

Marshall and his planners concluded that… "the casualties from the fighting would have been very much greater than might occur from the after-effects of bomb action." The problem was, of course, that the insidious effects of radioactive contamination were barely understood at the time. D.M Giangreco concludes… "it is not unreasonable to suggest that several million Japanese, and Americans, would be directly affected by nuclear fallout or residual blast radiation on Kyushu, southern Shikoku, and aboard ships…."
("Hell to Pay. Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947." (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009.)pp.201-203)

Sobering thought…

Cheers,
Bertie

Just read a novel by Sharra which discussed the demo proposal. Primary argument against was the uncertainty that it would work. Of course, demo on a city did not solicit immediate surrender either.

I have little or no sympathy for the Japanese government / armed forces (same thing) of WWII. They chased my father out of his home town and slew many of his neighbors. They were horrendous to prisoners of war and conquered civilians alike.

But I'll give another reason beyond fanaticism that they didn't surrender immediately after the first bomb: they were trying to figure out just what had happened. One scientist came back from a visit and insisted it was an atomic bomb. Once a second city was incinerated they took his word for it.

As for the original post, the US planned to drop the other 9 as soon as they managed to build them, I'm sure.

The japanese high command was convinced of a scenario where every last japanese man, woman, and child would happily fight ti the death rather than surrender dishonorably. Yamamato apparently made the surrender decision alone, dishonorable though it was, to prevent the wholesale elimination of the japanese culture and people.

I could be wrong, but that was the way I understood it.

"Racism played a huge role in WWII. We didn't round up German/American civilians and put them into "relocation" camps."

German-Americans didn't rise up and murder Americans to support the Third Reich, though. Japanese-Americans did.

German-Americans didn't rise up and murder Americans to support the Third Reich, though. Japanese-Americans did.

Sources, please.

"Sources, please."

Google the Niihau Incident. Ought to be common knowledge whenever discussion of the Japanese mass internments comes up.

Niihau was one of the reasons FDR issues executive order 9066 for the Japanese-American internment.

In 1988 Ronald Reagan signed the apology on behalf of the U.S. Government. The legislation admitted that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".

Because Congress said so, you think it's true?

The U.S. may have had a targetting plan for 12 more bombs, or 8 more bombs. But in August of 1945 the U.S. didn't HAVE 12, or 9, or even 5 bombs. The original production was 4. There were production plans to build more, but full scale production would take months to set up.

There was even a substantial debate about the testing in the US desert. They never tested the Little Boy bomb design, because … well, they didn't have a lot of bombs to test, and that design seemed likely enough to work to make the first drop on target the first test. But there was some debate on testing the Fat Man design, because there weren't enough bombs in hand to waste.

Which type would have made for a useful demo for the Japanese? The smaller bomb that might not even work, or the bigger bomb that we only had 2 of (after our own testing)? And if the Japanese were not convinced to surrender by bombing raids that laid half of Tokyo to waste, why would we expect them to be convinced to surrender by a big boom on some un-inhabited spot in the water somewhere?

As to the humanitarian concerns … yes I feel for the average Japanese civilian. But I feel no regrets for the decisions the U.S. made in August of 1945.

Others have mentioned how brutal the Japanese had been at Bataan, or in treating the POWs. But whether this does or does not balance the pain inflicted on Japanese civilians doesn't concern me. And it's not because I'm racist. Rather I feel that concern over the plight of the poor Japanese civilians is the racist view, for it's willingness to sacrifice the Chinese.

The Japanese occupation forces in China killed an average of 20,000 civilians per week. Sure, sometimes they worked overtime (Nanking, Doolittle raid retaliations, etc.). But those numbers (a few hundred K here, a few hundred K there) hardly diminish the average of about 20K per week for YEARS AND YEARS!

In the summer of 1945 the Japanese army in China was still largely undefeated. Fewer supplies were coming over from the homeland, but that mattered little as the China occupation had always been largely self-sufficient and more. So the occupation continued, and the murder continued, unabated.

Anyone who suggests that dropping the A-bombs on Japan was cruel, that we should have done a "demonstration", or just "embargoed" Japan and let them decide to surrender in time, or negotiated, etc., is effectively stating that they are willing to see tens and hundreds of thousands of innocent Chinese civilians die to protect those poor Japanese civilians.

There were lots of reasons to want to end the war as quickly as possible. Many economic reasons, many political reasons. But the humanitarian reasons should not be forgotten. The Japanese were a brutal murderous regime, that killed at a rapacious pace. They needed to be stopped by any and all means, as soon as possible. Anything else would be a sacrifice of the lives of innocents (the Japanese not being among that particular class).

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Excellent point about the Chinese population.