"Today in 1945; Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima" Topic

The Japanese then determined to approach the Soviet Union as a neutral, to help them negotiate an honorable end to WWII in the Pacific.

Instead, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, which surrendered after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9.

GdeP

In your face Imperial Japan! Eat nuclear reckoning! hahahahahah, suck nuclear mothaers!!!

I'm not saying we shouldn't have dropped the bomb (although at least one senior American compared it to using gas, which wasn't countenanced) but having said that, your post was in seriously bad taste, uparmored.

advocate… personally, (as well as the 139 million Americans in 1945) wish we'd had 3 or 4 of the things and, had used them all.

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Perhaps the best way to describe what happened is as "a necessary evil." As Indicated in the title of an excellent book by John Dower, the Pacific War was a "War without Mercy" characterized by atrocities and vicious racism on both sides. That said, the Japanese started it, and their cruelty to prisoners and subject populations was incredible. Their no surrender mentality ensured their fate. But, as always many innocents pay the price for their leaders.

Yes it is a good description calling it "a necessary evil". I too read Dower's "War without Mercy" …

Anyone who thinks the US should not have dropped the two A- bombs, should read that book and others …

seriously bad taste,

Maybe so but only in today's PC, etc., climate, etc. But it does demonstrate the ill will that the WWII Japanese had sown with their heinous war crimes, etc., they committed everywhere they went.

And note Uparmored is an Aussie. The Aussie POWs, etc., suffered greatly in the hands of the IJFs. Plus there was a real threat to the Aussie mainland being invaded by the IJFs. As it was they bombed many locations in Australia.

Instead, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, which surrendered after the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9.

As far as the USSR attacking Japan … link It was a land grab by Stalin to get as much land as possible to set up buffer zones, obtain resources, spread Communist dogma, etc., etc. In both the ETO and PTO …

Both North Korea and at one time North Vietnam were Stalin's/Communist Chinese, etc. creation in this land grab. If he had his way there would be North and South Japanese Islands. Or just the entire Japanese Mainland would be "Workers Paradise" based on Stalinist/Communist standards. E.g. the former East Germany and much of Eastern Europe, etc.

IIRC they are still "having a problem with some islands in that region. The Russians have a long history of conflict with Japan. The Russo-Japanese War, 1905-6, Japan sending troops to Russia along with the US and UK to combat the Communists at the end of WWI. Plus Khalkhin-Gol link in '39 before WWII broke out pretty much everywhere.

And I'm British. Our PoWs suffered too (and one lived in my street until a few years ago). I might just about accept Uparmored's comments from a WW2 vet. If he is one, I stand corrected.

Legion 4, well put. But the comments from our Australian contributor are inappropriate unless he's a WW2 veteran, which I rather doubt.

Seems the sort of thing an over-excited teenager brought up on video games and comic books might write – "necessary evils" like this, or the conventional bombing raids on Germany are not things to be wildly celebrated.

Thank God no nation has felt it necessary to employ such devices in anger in the intervening 75 years.

Let us pray the next 75 years proceed similarly.

Boo hoo I'm absolutely drowning in tears … not

Before anyone gets too excited with the "high-fives", it is worth remembering that yesterday's detested enemy can easily become tomorrow's firm ally.

Just saying.

B

Given the information available to Truman at the time including the perceived resistance to facing defeat in Imperial Japan, the estimated costs of Coronet and Olympic and frankly, the continued hatred given a very bitter conflict, I cannot find fault in the US decision.

That said, given the death toll of civilian women and children who were the bulk of both the casualties and the downstream suffering from cancer and radiation poisoning. No rational individual can feel anything other than horror at the outcome. I cannot criticize the decision but I can certainly view any celebration as simply disgusting.

The outcome of dropping the bomb was appalling, but the outcome of not dropping the bomb would almost certainly have been worse by at least an order of magnitude. The bombs ultimately saved more lives than they took and that is true for Japanese lives as much as for Allied.

Robert

Can we dispense with this long-running canard that Russia attacked Japan as some sort of treacherous premeditated 11th hour landgrab. Russia attacked Japan because it was agreed at either Tehran in 1943 or Yalta in 1944, I forget which, that Russia would do so within 3 months of the defeat of Germany.

If a landgrab was the idea, Russia would have attacked Japan in May, not August. That would have given Stalin time to grab more. He knew that the Trinity test had been successful because he was told so at the Potsdam conference in July and he had in any case infiltrated the Manhattan Project. So this told him the USA had an operable war-winning weapon in its hands, meaning Russian intervention probably wouldn't be required.

Germany surrendered on 9 May Moscow time, so Russia had to attack Japan by 9 August. She left complying with this treaty obligation until the very last possible day, presumably in case Japan got nuked and surrendered so that it wouldn't be necessary at all.

Russia suffered IIRC something like 50,000 casualties fighting Japan, which is not a trivial cost.

The Soviet entry into the war against Japan was also something that the western allies, or at least the U.S., actively sought. Until the atomic bomb was dropped the U.S. was expecting to have to invade the Japanese home islands, plus there was the issue of what to do with all the Japanese troops in China.

And I'm British. Our PoWs suffered too (and one lived in my street until a few years ago).

And I am Yank, US POWs, Dutch, the PI, etc., suffered greatly at the hands of the IJFs. And many were executed that survived the war. Sadly some escaped justice…

My Father served in France with the US 90ID before German mortar or FA rounds caused him to be WIA. So I can't say that he suffered in the hands of IJFs, fortunately(!)…

Can we dispense with this long-running canard that Russia attacked Japan as some sort of treacherous premeditated 11th hour landgrab.

That was part of the deal at Tehran and Yalta. See the link I posted previously here on this thread. E.g.

the long-term buildup of Soviet forces in the Far East since Tehran, and the date of the German surrender some three months earlier; on August 3, Marshal Vasilevsky reported to Premier Joseph Stalin that, if necessary, he could attack on the morning of 5 August.

The USSR was in no position to attack earlier.

Also:

Stalin faced a dilemma – he wanted to avoid a two-front war at almost any cost yet the Soviet leader also wanted to extract gains in the Far East as well as Europe. The only way Stalin could make Far Eastern gains without a two-front war would be for Germany to capitulate before Japan.

I don't see any canard there … He wanted his piece of the action in the Far East along with Europe.

But IIRC some of the land that Stalin took was turned over to his Communist Comrades. IIRC the Russians still hold some of the land they took at the end of WWII in the PTO ? To call Stalin treacherous some may believe is an understatement.

As noted Stalin did not attack sooner, as he was pretty busy in Europe at the time. And did not what to fight a two front war. With Germany gone he had more forces to turn East.

Russia planned to invade the Japanese Mainland : link

Soviet intentions

The island of Hokkaido
Unknown to the Americans, the Soviet Union also considered invading a major Japanese island, Hokkaido, by the end of August 1945,[citation needed] which would have put pressure on the Allies to act sooner than November.

In the early years of World War II, the Soviets had planned on building a huge navy to catch up with the Western world. However, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 forced the suspension of this plan: the Soviets had to divert most of their resources to fighting the Germans and their allies, primarily on land, throughout most of the war, leaving their navy relatively poorly equipped.[86][87][88] As a result, in Project Hula (1945), the United States transferred about 100 naval vessels out of the 180 planned to the Soviet Union in preparation for the planned Soviet entry into the war against Japan. The transferred vessels included amphibious assault ships.

At the Yalta Conference (February 1945), the Allies had agreed that the Soviet Union would take the southern part of the island of Sakhalin, which Russia had ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Portsmouth after the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War (the Soviets already controlled the northern part), and the Kuril Islands, which had been assigned to Japan in the 1875 Treaty of St. Petersburg. On the other hand, no agreement envisaged Soviet participation in the invasion of Japan itself.[citation needed]

IMO sounds like a Land Grab by any other name …

Russian Invades Japanese islands :link
However, in reality the USSR had little to no experience in Amph Ops and when they tried to mount a few. Invading some small IJF occupied islands off the Japanese mainland. They didn't always fare well. But took the islands regardless ..

Garde de Paris lost me at "honorable." Honorable ends go to people who wage honorable war. Japan had launched a savage and unprovoked war on China, accompanied by rapes and massacres on a scale rarely seen in human history. When the western nations refused them the resources to continue this war, they attacked the West, raping and murdering captured Canadian nurses in Hong Kong, using prisoners of war for medical experiments and vivisecting American airmen.

In a military sense, the war was hopeless by the end of 1943. But rather than seek peace, by 1945 the Japanese leadership was arming women, children and old men--sometimes with pikes. Were we to tell them "go home, and don't try this again until you've built up your industry to sustain the war" or to seek the sort of surrender which would remove the power structure which did these things?

So the United States warned the Japanese of "new and terrible weapons" took cities off the target list for their cultural significance, and dropped a second bomb only when we knew by decrypts that the Japanese government had decided Hiroshima was a fluke, and that they would fight on.

In commemoration of which, every year someone like Garde de Paris puts an article in every web site, magazine and newspaper in the world hinting but usually not quite saying that the American warmongers were picking on the poor helpless Japanese, and that we should either have left the Japanese military in power or fought a long bitter land campaign in the home islands, killing far more Japanese civilians than died in the atomic bombings.

Thank you, no, Garde de Paris. I had a father and two uncles in uniform in 1945, and their lives were too high a price to pay for the nonexistent "honor" of the Japanese leadership.

"In commemoration of which, every year someone like Garde de Paris puts an article in every web site, magazine and newspaper in the world hinting but usually not quite saying that the American warmongers were picking on the poor helpless Japanese, and that we should either have left the Japanese military in power or fought a long bitter land campaign in the home islands, killing far more Japanese civilians than died in the atomic bombings."

You read far more into my comment than is there.

I used the term "honorable Surrender" as the Japanese may have considered "honor."

I was 5 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. My father took me to the Saturday Matinees at the movie house where he worked (a Christmas present to my mom early 1941 when I was 4) where I saw the current newsreels, and some recent history. Between January 1941 and August, 1945 I saw many acts of brutality: The Rape of Nanking by the Japanese, who killed over 250,000 Chinese; "Why we fight" series to inspire the US to fight to win; the scenes of the Nazi concentration camp dead and survivors.

My father was drafted into the US Navy early in May. He left our house at 8:00 AM, with mama wailing about no money and a kid to raise. He returned at 5:30. Germany had just surrendered, and they did not need him.

Today I see the Japanese as probably the most racist of all asiatics. They even have restaurants in Japan that are for Japanese only, and many of them.

GdeP

My dad was drafted in September 1941. He spent 3 years in the Pacific, and had already been discharged. He was working in an aircraft factory in Dallas that August day. and he always remembered it as one of the happiest of his life.

I'll trust his judgment over a bunch of goofball 21st century revisionist historians.

Paul Fussell's "Thank God For The Atom Bomb" encapsulates the views of an awful lot of WWII vets I knew over the years:

PDF link

George MacDonald Fraser's very different conclusions in "Quartered Safe Out Here" also deserve examination. Fraser fought the Japanese, and had no illusions about their conduct, in action or out of it.

My Grandfather was messed up in many ways. He fought in the last campaign against the Japanese by Australia. Bougainville. My great uncle was captured at Singapore. Spent 4 years or so in Changhi, most of his mates died there. He was also a messed up individual. His wife was an Army nurse that nursed captured Japanese soldiers back to health before they went to our humane POW camps in rural NSW. My grandmother was a driver for the Australian Army in WW2, but stayed in country.

When I went to live and work in Japan (couldn't get work in Australia so took up the old English teaching in Japan that anyone with a pulse and native english can get) my Grandfather stopped talking to me until he died. He just said the Japanese are very cruel people and stopped talking to me after that.

I met all of them. My Mum was related to em and raised me. She had a lot of problems with drinking too.

If Aboriginals can have "collective inherited trauma" from attrocities 200 years ago then can I have any legitimate feelings as to what happened to my country and my forebears 70 years ago?

Uparmoured, your feelings are yours and indeed are legitimate. However, you remain responsible for how you choose to communicate on a public forum.

I for one fall into thinking of the dropping of the atomic bombs as the lesser of evils that were possible. I do however remain conscious that they were acts that involved incinerating 1000s of children and babies. This is something that I can not celebrate or treat flippantly.

So whilst your feelings are legitimate, my and others feelings of distaste for what you choose to say about the use of nuclear weapons are just as legitimate, are they not?

Today I see the Japanese as probably the most racist of all asiatics. They even have restaurants in Japan that are for Japanese only, and many of them.

GdeP

I did not know that. Thanks ! I thought the Chinese were …

I'll trust his judgment over a bunch of goofball 21st century revisionist historians.

Nine pound round

I have heard Fussel interviewed on TV a number of times while he was alive. But had not read about Fraser's comments. Regardless I think it is pretty clear after some of the last major battles in the PTO, e.g. Saipan, Iwo and Okinawa it was pretty clear invading the mainland would be a blood bath for all involved. Including women and children … Sad but true …

Uparmored thank you for that information. I know sometimes I give out some of my personal information, experiences, training, etc., to possibly assist those reading my posts in understanding why, what etc. I said what I did.

But that always does not always work, as some, as have I, have biases, etc., regardless.

I for one fall into thinking of the dropping of the atomic bombs as the lesser of evils that were possible.

That says in all IMO. Both targets had military/production value so they were chosen, among some others, as backups. For better or worse in WWII, Korea & Vietnam collateral damage[CD] was generally of little concern often.

As I said on another thread, " … hopefully we won't be saddled with strict ROE and fear of Collateral Damage as we were in Irag and A'stan. Firepower only works and saves the lives of your troops if you use it. As a former Grunt Ldr/Cdr I know we'd appreciate that." …

It's the "Devil's Alternative" so to speak, saving my troops, comrades and friends lives in a battle vs. killing some men, woman and children I/we don't know … And let me make this clear. I'm not talking about a My Lai situation. Lining up non-combatant and even military personnel and shooting them out right, e.g. Malmedy … is a War Crime … period …

However, e.g. when calling for fire support in a firefight and having it denied for fear of CD. That could be a bit "upsetting", I'd believe/imagine.

Hopefully we will never have to make that choice.

I believe that if we had not seen the horrors of nuked cities in 45, the bombs would have been used later, probably by 1950. Imho its pretty likely that the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made it clear to anybody that the next war would be too terrible to bear, and so they let it be – several times during the cold war.

Yes I think in the long run nukes made war in the 1st World made war too "costly" in both blood & treasure. And actually prevented WWIII.

The fallout, etc., made it too deadly to use against 3d World nations. For obvious reasons …