I would argue there is in that they almost certainly resulted in fewer deaths than an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have done.
Hiroshima
- Thread starter R.N7
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Soldiers maybe but innocent women and children never.. Both of these bombings killed mostly people who had little to do with the war so in my view there wasnt anything in it but to show them whos boss.. Regardless of damage and casulty of innocent. Which made them no better then the enemy they were fighting..
I agree. You would think lessons have been learned but clearly they haven't. America is still the terrorist unfortunately
Mind blowing statement that
This was posted earlier:
The reason I gave for justifying the attacks is not necessarily my belief, but am sure it factored into the justification used at the time by those who made the decision.
The argument for this has been debated for years, and I get what your saying here..
But the fact remains that the firebombing before the dropping of the A bombs had already crippled Japan and killed somewhere between 300-900 thousand people.. And wounded even more. The use of the A bombs annihilated those cities and killed around 300 thousand people and that´s without the injured and the aftermath that followed the A bombing.. The allied already had sea-blockade going on and what played more part in Japan surrendering was the Soviets had brought 1.6 million troops to Japan.
The statements made by the allied in the Potsdam Declarations in July gave a clear statement of intent if Japan wouldn´t surrender they would inflict "prompt and utter destruction" and I guess they showed them..
Ummmm you might want to study your history more especially civilian deaths. Battles don't take place on open fields. The happen in villages, towns, cities. You know places were civilians live. Plus remember all those soldiers well the are people also. Most if them would not have even been soldiers if not for the war
How much the role of the Russians entering the war played in the surrender is also open to debate plus you are 100% in correct when you say the Soviets brought 1.6 mil troops to Japan. That never happened. At least get your facts in order.
For timeline purposes.
Bombing of Hiroshima. Aug 6 1945
Bombing of Nagasaki Aug 9
Russian declaration of war and invasion of Japanese controlled territories mainly China and Northern Korea. aug 8/9.
Bombing of Hiroshima. Aug 6 1945
Bombing of Nagasaki Aug 9
Russian declaration of war and invasion of Japanese controlled territories mainly China and Northern Korea. aug 8/9.
So why didn't they surrender?
http://www.spectacle.org/696/long.html
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
I'll re-post the 2 articles I did before in this thread.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
I'll re-post the 2 articles I did before in this thread.
Team Brian has made this thread a compelling read. Really interesting stuff.
I agree.. But as Germany was out of the picture and the Soviets entering the war against Japan this wasnt really needed.. Or was it ?Historians and scholars are still debating it..
The same day of the Nakasaki bombing the 9th of august they launched an attack on the Japanese in Manchucko which had been a puppet state since 1932 or 1934 thats what I stated with the Russians bringing troops to Japan as it was a Japanese puppet state.
And historians have also stated that with the Soviet invasion the chances of Japan mediating the termination of the war through Moscow was out of the question. So the war was probably at its end even without the USA dropping the A bombs, but who knows? But with the Soviets included in the Allied forces the USA should have been aware of that surprise attack on the same day of their bombing?
But that aside I cant see any point in these attacks other than what the Allied threatened Japan with earlier.. But who knows its just my opinion.. It might be wrong or it might be right. More people could have been killed had the war lasted longer, the planned allied invasion in November could have killed many more.. But we will never find out!
It's virtually guaranteed that an allied invasion of Japan would have resulted in millions of deaths.
There's also the potential of Soviet rule over parts of Japan if there was an invasion of Honshu Japan if the Allies ended up doing what they did in Europe and Korea. The deaths from that would have been innumerable.
Granted the major part of my opinion about these events is, of course, outrage at the killing of civilians & its legacy. However, a seconday but highly important part is this: my suspicion that the bomb-dropping wasn't so much about shortening the War but a show of strength and hubris. If indeed that was the case, then it's doubly unforgivable.
Part of it definitely was sending a message to the soviets.
It laid down a marker for MAD and paved the way for a cold rather than hot war.
There's that, but as I recall from my studies it was also considered the one means of ending the war against Japan that would cause the fewest casualties.
I'm going to be an ass, because this is the third time I've entered this exact post in the last 4 years and people never seem to read the entire thing.
The atomic bombs dropped on Japan saved MILLIONS of civilian lives. I'll frame that behind, IF the United States was forced to invade. Here are the facts.
The last people to die of starvation in Japan as a result of the war (official war related famine) was in like 1950. You can look this figure up. That is FIVE years AFTER the war that people were STILL dying due to war destruction of the infrastructure. That is WITH an American occupation which was funneling humanitarian supplies to the country.
Now, let's just walk through what happens if the US had to actually invade.
Infrastructure destruction would have been near total levels in the most populous areas of the country. Tens of millions of people would have been displaced (Japan is a small Island chain if you didn't know). What is the immediate result of that? Starvation on mass scale in addition to zero water treatment. Tens of millions of people would have been contaminating their own water supplies. What happens when dysentery and typhus started to sweep through the millions of displaced, homeless, starving refugees? People start dying. They start dying in horrifying numbers.
I've read estimates that suggest conservatively, based on how an American invasion would have gone, that 10 million civilians would have died due to primarily three factors.
1) Direct fighting (smallest number)
2) Starvation
3) Unpotable water resulting in epidemic.
Now, it doesn't really matter if the US was considering these factors, or if you choose to believe that it was. The reality then is that if no bombs were going to be dropped, then the US was going to invade. IF the US invades then not only does it kill hundreds of thousands, maybe a million or more soldiers, but indirectly the fighting would have ravaged the country to such an extent that MILLIONS of civilians would have died in one of the largest humanitarian crisis' in history. These projections are based on what happened in Japan during and after the war (a lot of civilians still died of the same 3 reasons without an invasion) and historical evidence from other areas in other wars.
So weigh in your hand, 100k dead in two bombs, versus an invasion with millions of civilian (almost certainly more than 10 million) deaths. I don't even need to list soldier casualties to know if the bombs were justified.
Remember, war doesn't happen in a bubble. Especially not WW2. It's unthinkable to me that people completely disregard the consequences of a land invasion of Japan regarding what would happen to the civilian population in OUR era where we have comparatively tiny and unimportant wars causing mass outcry over humanitarian issues. Infrastructure? Gone. Housing? Gone. Food? Diminished and unable to reach the population. Water? Undrinkable. Together this is a recipe for utter devastation of a civilian population.
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Yeah the first steps towards MAD and the eventual existense of two large nuclear arsenals played a big role in keeping the cold war from going hot.
Like I said before this might all be right, but we will never know. The war might have been over before the invasion would have been made. But everything you just listed out make absolute sense..
Maybe, but there's no guarantee that an allied invasion of Japan would have been necessary in the first place. This fanatical belief in self sacrifice has been overplayed, in my opinion. The Japanese war morale was certainly declining, which is why the nuclear bombs worked in the first place. Dozens of Japanese cities had already been essentially destroyed by conventional terror bombing. The Japanese were holding out hope that the Soviet Union would be a third party "peace talk" host, and those hopes were dashed when the Soviets invaded Manchuria instead.
I would also say that it is folly to look at the costly invasions of small, highly fortified islands defended by (in many cases) fanatical and experienced troops, and extrapolate from that the perceived costs of invading mainland Japan. Japan itself was far from as fortified, since the very purpose of this outer ring of fortified islands was to provide an area of control to indirectly protect the main islands. The invasion at Normandie has been called the largest invasion in history, but it's also a matter of history that in the first day of fighting saw only a few thousand killed, which compared to the huge land battles of the Eastern Front was nothing at all.
The Japanese didn't have some magical source of power of resistance that the Germans lacked. The allies had complete air and naval control, would soon have complete control of China from which to stage an invasion, and it was in the Emperor's best interest to avoid a long, costly subjugation of Japan which would likely have seen him tried as the war criminal he was. He had a lot more influence and control on the war effort than many people give him credit for, and he had a very real sense of self-preservation.
I am unaware of any historian who has ever called Overlord the largest invasion in history. If you mean largest naval invasion, then yes, it is that. However as an actual invasion, D-Day is small. D-Day being the designation for the designated day of the invasion so very small numbers of troops involved.
On day-0 about 150 thousand allied troops engaged I think 3 German divisions. That is less than 60k men. In terms of scale, that is small potatoes. It probably isn't even in the top 20 operations in the entire war.
By comparison. Bagration had millions of men involved. Barbarossa had almost 10 million men involved. There is a reason the casualties were pretty minimal in Normandy. While no doubt the fighting that did take place on Sword, Juno and Omaha was terrifying. There just were not that many men involved on either side in the actual fighting.
You are also completely wrong about the Japanese and their willingness to sacrifice. Their culture was completely different to our own. There are very real reasons why on many of the Islands the US cleared during the Island hopping campaign there were few if any Japanese POW's. In Europe the ratio of KIA to Prisoners is usually around 50/50. Once a unit takes 50% casualties and is overrun they tend to surrender. On the Pacific Islands this was not the case. Iwo Jima, garrison of ~20k resulted in 200 POW's. They didn't all die in combat either. Large numbers committed suicide. This is where the infamous Banzai charge comes from. The Japanese didn't just fix bayonets and charge as part of their typical tactics. These were suicide, desperation attacks. Germans didn't do this. Americans didn't do this. Russians (usually) didn't do this. Canadians didn't do it either. Desperation attacks like what the Japanese used in a systematic fashion were completely alien to every Western forces military.
On Saipan, Hirohito released a broadcast which basically told the civilians there that they faced terrible horrors at the hands of the Americans and encouraged them to commit suicide. They did in very large numbers, infamously flinging themselves off of cliffs.
Here is the reality of what was going on in Japan. The Diet was split between a dove faction and a hawk faction. The hawkish faction controlled the Emperor and controlled the diet. The doves were sending out tentative feelers to the Americans regarding a negotiated conditional surrender. The Allies had already agreed at Yalta and Potsdam that only unconditional surrender would be accepted. The dove faction had no real authority to send these feelers out in the first place, nor did they have the traction within the diet to do anything anyways. This is where the myth that Japan was about to surrender comes from.
Would the Soviet entrance into the war have shifted the balance far enough for the dove faction to take control of the diet? I personally doubt it, but it is possible. Truman had the choice of letting the war drag on, at the cost of tens of, even hundreds of thousands of dead civilians per week, or he could drop the bombs. To me the realpolitiking doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if they were trying to show the USSR they had the bomb. It doesn't matter if they were doing it to test them. All that matters are the hard numbers. More people lived overall, on both sides by bringing the war to a sudden end than to allow it to linger on potentially ending with an invasion.
The number of people who died between Hiroshima and Nagasaki is generally not really understood. Between both bombs about 100k people died. The after effects were not and are not as devastating as people think. Statistically there was a very minimal rise in birth defects in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, barely outside the statistical norm for the rest of Japan. The issue there is perception. EVERY Birth defect was blamed on the bombs.
In the end, my argument doesn't really care about the ferocity of the fighting that would have occurred in an invasion of the home islands. It would have been ferocious no doubt about it and brutal with extraordinarily high casualties on both sides. The US forces would have taken casualties at a sustained they would not have encountered since the civil war. My primary argument and concern is with the civilian population. The death toll in the civilian population would have been absolutely horrifying.
In the end, Truman made the only choice he could. Drop the bombs and make them surrender. I can't even imagine the outrage that would exist if Truman didn't drop them, the US invaded and a couple million Japanese and American soldiers died and on top of that 10 or 15 million Japanese civilians died.
On top of all this, most Japanese consider the bombs a tragedy but a necessary one to prevent a greater loss of life from occurring.
We could probably save a lot of human suffering and lives by having mandatory human experimentation. The ones we test on wouldn't be too happy, as they would suffer and often die but it would be a great help in scientific research that would end up reducing the suffering of millions of others.
We don't though. Not anymore, at least. It's really quite messed up.
I think I feel the same way about the argument that dropping these bombs ultimately saved lives. It may well be true but there's more to it than that.
We don't though. Not anymore, at least. It's really quite messed up.
I think I feel the same way about the argument that dropping these bombs ultimately saved lives. It may well be true but there's more to it than that.
Has anyone mentioned the fact that terms of japanese surrender were already being negotiated and the only reason they hadn't surrendered was because they wanted the emperor and the powers that be to be left alone which is what happened after they were nuked. Which raises the question why wasn't the surrender accepted before ? I reckon something about sending a message to the world and specially to the soviets.
Victors write the history...
Victors write the history...
I am completely aware that it isn't the largest invasion in history, which you should realize when I immediately followed that up by pointing out just how much larger the Eastern front battles were.
You yourself point out how many died at Iwo Jima, so I assume you know how many American soldiers died. Seven thousand. They lost a third as many as the heavily entrenched soldiers. At Guadalcanal, another battle which has been held forward as a sort of Phyrric victory for the Americans, the Japanese lost 31k, while the Americans lost 7k. At Okinawa they lost almost ten times as many soldiers. At Saipan, eight times as many. In the Phillippines, the Japanese lost over twenty times as many.
We can argue all day long whether or not the Japanese war morale really was as fanatical as it has been portrayed, but the realities of war are that when you are fighting a force that is better trained, better equipped, better rested and with complete and utter naval and air superiority, you aren't going to inflict anywhere near the casualties they inflict on you. When experienced soldiers - or at least as experienced as they got for the Japanese at that point - who are heavily entrenched, die at such a rate compared to their enemies, there is no reason to assume that an attack on the main islands would have been any worse. In fact, it would probably have been a lot easier as the larger area allows for more manoeuvring for the force that has absolute control of the seas and the skies, and considering the main land would be far from as fortified as the islands in the defensive ring and with a rapidly dwindling number of experienced officers and soldiers.
Come on now, you can't follow up "all that matters are the hard numbers" with an assumption that is still very much disputed in history. And if you are, you definitely shouldn't say that "about 100k people died" when the real numbers are at least 50% larger, possibly twice or more.
Does this mean you think directly targeting civilians is justified in war? Hitler didn't order the Blitz because he hated the British population, he did it because he thought it would lower the British war morale sufficiently to end the war quickly.
I remember reading that the terms of the surrender were wrongly misinterpreted. But also more importantly there was no way the US was going to spend billions on the bomb and not use it.
Also as a sideline there was growing pressure on the US government that the people of the US wanted their soldiers back and the war over as soon as possible.
Although looking back it does seemed dropping the bomb was a sadly the right choice.
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the allies had agreed what terms they would accept from both Germany and Japan regarding a surrendor. so Japan was treated the same way as the other major belligerant. Prior to the A-bombs there were no direct negotiations happening, Japan had tried to get terms through neutral parties (including at the time the USSR) but always on terms of their choosing. Even after the two bombs were dropped hardliners attempted a coup to prevent the Japanese Govt from acceptings the allies terms for peace, there were divisions within the Japanese power structure over whether to surrender or keep fighting. Essentially the terms the Japanese offered were not agreeable and it went beyond the keeping the emporer on the throne. From the point of time the leaders of the allies were in, they could not be certain of what Japanese actions were going to be.
Without a doubt there were post war implications that played into using the bombs, but they were not the only considerations, nor necessarily the major one. Just as the Soviets decision to agree enter the war against Japan was driven mostly by their desire to be involved in the post war settlement and gain terratory and influence.
The final decision to let the emporer stay as a figure head was not made final until after the war was over and the occupation well under way.
Yes the victors write the history, it doesn't mean we just throw out everything written by the victors. History re-written years later can also be slanted towards one view or another also. Plus i find the phrase is often used in these types of discussions as a tired cliche to try and discredit a view that doesn't fit ones personal liking.
The A-bombs were the final touches on a long, bloody, violent, war full of horrors that most today and at the time could barely imagine.
No denying that this also had a place in the decision making.
And yes the US and the rest of the world were very war weary. As I said earlier it is important to remember the vast majority of people who served in the war would not have been in the military if not for the war. They were not professional soliders, they were, to use a cliche, citizen soldiers.. Their families wanted them home safe and sound, a feeling I think we can all understand,.
Also the end objective was long talked of as unconditional surrender. This was a promise of finality to the ordinary person, a reason for fighting, and the politicians were as mindful of that as they are today.
Good discussion here around 1: 25
Self-sacrifice comes in many forms beyond the idea of Kamikaze pilots though. I recall reading stuff that implied the leadership would have no problem enlisiting women and children to help defend Japan from hostile invasion. Keep in mind that Japan's history of interaction wth the colonial powers was mostly cooperative and they were treated almost as equals so any purported invasion by anyone would have been terrifying to them, no doubt.
That being said my American history professor was a Yankee lesbian, so I may be somewhat biased toward the victor's version of events, yeah. She had a fantastic Justine Frischmann (Elastica) style haircut though.
Harry Truman was president of the US, not Japan. His responsibility as war leader was to the young men of America, not Japanese civilians. America lost 300,000 men in WW2, and the American public had no stomach for losing another quarter of a million soldiers fighting their way inch by inch across mainland Japan.
There's no record that Truman agonized much over the decision to use the A bomb. After the slaughter of the Pacific campaign, it must have seemed like a god sent alternative to a costly invasion. The precedent for targeting civilians was already well established in both the European and Asian theatres. The bomb was just the most effective weapon at the Americans disposal.
Cooperative is a bit of an exaggeration. They certainly considered themselves the equals of European powers, and had shown it against Russia in 1905 and in joining the Western Powers in keeping China under their boot, but we shouldn't forget that they were after all forcibly opened to trade - with unfavourable conditions - by American warships. Gunboat diplomacy definitely applies.
It's an interesting thought, though, to imagine how an invasion of the main islands would have been received. The gunboat diplomacy only ever went as far as threatening to shell Tokyo, and giving a "taste" of it. Beyond that you have to go back to the Mongols in the 13th century for the last time anyone attempted to invade Japan, and they barely even made it on to the shores. I wonder if not the famous Japanese war morale would have taken a heavy hit when foreign invaders actually landed on the main islands and began to make headway. Who knows.
Team Brian and Nucks have been spot on in this thread imo. I dont think there should be much debate over whether or not the dropping of the bomb(s) was the best long term solution for both Allied and Japanese lives, soldiers and civilians.
The thing that makes this an interesting topic is that the human brain isnt really wired to think about things like this in terms of hard numbers. For instance, torturing someone is always seen as a wrong thing to do, even though the end result might be many lives saved. In the end thats the kernel of this debate - how much are you willing to let natural human empathy and morals slide in favor of cold, logical rationale. I think that in the particular case of the A-bombs over Japan the right decision was made, although there are definitely moral issues with the decision.
The thing that makes this an interesting topic is that the human brain isnt really wired to think about things like this in terms of hard numbers. For instance, torturing someone is always seen as a wrong thing to do, even though the end result might be many lives saved. In the end thats the kernel of this debate - how much are you willing to let natural human empathy and morals slide in favor of cold, logical rationale. I think that in the particular case of the A-bombs over Japan the right decision was made, although there are definitely moral issues with the decision.
The problem with the reasoning that dropping the A bombs worked in the long term and shorten the war is that this reasoning came after the bombs were first dropped as to get rid of any guilt the American people had.
As for the moral issues of the dropping of the bombs there were times where it was truly disgusting, the US would regularly fly B-29(I think) into Hiroshima so the people of the city could get used to the sound(They called the plane Mr Bee) so when they finally dropped the bombs there was no chance of anyone getting to a bomb shelter which meant there was a higher number of deaths.
Also the US leave certain City's alone as to save them for the bombs.
This isn't to say dropping the bombs was the wrong choice(Sadly I think in the end it proved to be the right choice) but to the US dropped the bombs because they wanted to finally get the war over with and go home really doesn't add up sadly. Or if it was true then they really went with a truly cruel way of doing it.
The end of WWII... I wonder how the US feel about the terms they ended it on now.
If USA didn't strip Japan of Korea, Taiwan and perhaps even Manchunia, they'd be in a much better strategic position to choke China today.
If USA didn't strip Japan of Korea, Taiwan and perhaps even Manchunia, they'd be in a much better strategic position to choke China today.
It was the right thing to do. We (not just the US, but the collective WE meaning the allies) could not let Japan hold onto an Empire gained via a war of aggression. Especially considering the way the Japanese treated people in these areas.The end of WWII... I wonder how the US feel about the terms they ended it on now.
If USA didn't strip Japan of Korea, Taiwan and perhaps even Manchunia, they'd be in a much better strategic position to choke China today.
I don't think I have heard anyone in the US complain about stripping Japan of these territories.
Yeah, about that...
By most accounts they treated the Taiwanese pretty well...
Anyway, the point is not if it was the right thing to do 70 years ago, it's if the US regrets doing so in the years since (especially in recent years). A Japan that includes Taiwan and Korea will be so much better for the US in terms of their containment of CHina.