Opinion of the atomic bombings of Japan

[TDAS04]

Well?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Some combination of one or three.

I don't think Japan wouldn't have surrendered otherwise and the massive amounts of dead on both sides with an invasion would be unthinkable, possibly in the millions when you consider civilians.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

This might be naive, because I do not know which governments knew about the bomb, could have accessed the technology, etc.  

BUT, what if the U.S. had dropped a single bomb off the coast of Tokyo and let the Japanese know that without surrender that same bomb would be dropped on one of their cities.  You don't think that would've caused quite the stir?  

EDIT: Japan DID have a nuclear weapons program, but it does not seem to have gotten out of the laboratory stage. 

Was there a drawback to Japan knowing the U.S. had the bomb?  In much the same way MAD worked, couldn't there have been a policy of one-way assured destruction from the U.S. against Japan? 

Either way, the fact that this was a civilian target is insanely unsettling, and I can't imagine what the response would be today if, for say, Iran got a hold of an ICBM and decided to hit Boston.

[TNF]

Truman made the right call.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This might be naive, because I do not know which governments knew about the bomb, could have accessed the technology, etc.  

BUT, what if the U.S. had dropped a single bomb off the coast of Tokyo and let the Japanese know that without surrender that same bomb would be dropped on one of their cities.  You don't think that would've caused quite the stir?  

EDIT: Japan DID have a nuclear weapons program, but it does not seem to have gotten out of the laboratory stage. 

Was there a drawback to Japan knowing the U.S. had the bomb?  In much the same way MAD worked, couldn't there have been a policy of one-way assured destruction from the U.S. against Japan? 

Either way, the fact that this was a civilian target is insanely unsettling, and I can't imagine what the response would be today if, for say, Iran got a hold of an ICBM and decided to hit Boston.

If I remember correctly the council was at tie even after the second bombing and the Emperor had to break it in favor of surrender. I don't think a show like that would have convinced them to surrender. And an invasion would have probably meant far more civilians dying since the gov't was arming them and training them to turn every hut into a pitched battle with the Allies should and invasion come. It would have been like Vietnam but on a far grander scale and with ten times as many casaulties just among the Armed forces involved.

[anvi]

Voted option 2.  Have made my reasons known many times on this forum, so there is no need to rehash them.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

This might be naive, because I do not know which governments knew about the bomb, could have accessed the technology, etc.  

BUT, what if the U.S. had dropped a single bomb off the coast of Tokyo and let the Japanese know that without surrender that same bomb would be dropped on one of their cities.  You don't think that would've caused quite the stir?  

EDIT: Japan DID have a nuclear weapons program, but it does not seem to have gotten out of the laboratory stage. 

Was there a drawback to Japan knowing the U.S. had the bomb?  In much the same way MAD worked, couldn't there have been a policy of one-way assured destruction from the U.S. against Japan? 

Either way, the fact that this was a civilian target is insanely unsettling, and I can't imagine what the response would be today if, for say, Iran got a hold of an ICBM and decided to hit Boston.

If I remember correctly the council was at tie even after the second bombing and the Emperor had to break it in favor of surrender. I don't think a show like that would have convinced them to surrender. And an invasion would have probably meant far more civilians dying since the gov't was arming them and training them to turn every hut into a pitched battle with the Allies should and invasion come. It would have been like Vietnam but on a far grander scale and with ten times as many casaulties just among the Armed forces involved.

This is probably correct.  A mainland invasion of Japan would've been a massacre up there with the Eastern Front. Can't vote for that.

I probably would've targeted strictly military targets; but at the same time, I'm just a 21st Century civilian with hindsight.  I trust that the President, a very good one at that, probably made the right call when it came to targeting Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I mean, if they were REALLY trying to just kill as many Japanese as possible... why not Tokyo?  I'm sure mass slaughter was not the goal. 

[anvi]

Just for the record, on one night in March, 1945, the numbers of people killed in the Tokyo firebombings exceeded the number of those who died in the atomic bomb blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  And bombings of Tokyo had been ongoing since early 1942.  Tokyo civilians were not spared for any special reasons during the Pacific War.   

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Certainly the civilian casualties were horrific, but any option (amphibious invasion or continued firebombings/blockade) would mean far more deaths.

[opebo]

I'm a little bit obsessed about the US-Japan relationship since then.. at least as far as I am obsessed about anything in 'my field'...

I'd like to interject a thought about the 'benefits' which flowed to the masters of the USA from the bombings:  it wasn't only avoidance of a costly invasion and an easy, swift, victory, but also I think we can see that the act set a tone which resonated within Japanese culture rather perfectly (by design or by chance) which helped to create the ensuing near perfect 70 year submission to American domination.

Of course, the fact that American domination serves the same people who benefited from the fascist regimes in Japan, Germany, etc maybe the 'real' reason for this acceptance of subjected status.  But the casual ruthlessness at the outset definitely 'set a tone'.

[H. Ross Peron]

Truman made the right call.

[© tweed]

great war crime, solely motivated by keeping Stalin out of the construction of post-War Japan.

[DC Al Fine]

Certainly the civilian casualties were horrific, but any option (amphibious invasion or continued firebombings/blockade) would mean far more deaths.

[Goldwater]

Truman made the right call.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

Certainly the civilian casualties were horrific, but any option (amphibious invasion or continued firebombings/blockade) would mean far more deaths.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I don't think it was necessary and would not have taken this initiative myself, but I understand why Truman thought it was the least worse option.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Also, there is the possibility that, without Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the subsequent wave of terror about nuclear weapons, the bomb might end up being used some years later - at a time when even deadlier bombs had been developed and with the possibility of triggering a World War III.

[politicallefty]

I believe President Truman made the right decision in ordering a nuclear strike on Japan. A ground invasion would have been far worse for both sides. I suppose a strong case could be made that the targets should have been military instead of civilian, which I would agree with.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

What would be the alternative to dropping these two bombs? Since the Japanese were nowhere near to surrender, would that be an invasion? Invasion, that would cost thousands of hundreds lives on both sides?

I've frequently heard "invasion wouldn't be nessesery, because the U.S. already controlled the air and bombings would make the Japanese quit at some point". Fair point, but it would take burning more and more cities (LeMay was very good at it), so it might have been far more deadly than two atomic bombs.

I'm not sure about drooping it on less populated area or demonstrating it on non-populated target. After all, it took two bombs to make Tokyo call it quits. I think Truman made a horrific, but right call.

[Maxwell]

Truman made the right call.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

Truman made the right call.

[anvi]

Ok, since questions are being asked here, I am going to make my case again, in somewhat different terms than before.

Wars are waged to achieve political ends.  Japan was organizing an all-out defense of the mainland in 1945 not for the purposes of winning the war, since by that time such a goal was entirely out of reach, but for the purposes of making an all-out-allied invasion too costly and so giving themselves leverage for a slightly more favorable armistice deal.  The point is that what was at stake was not the outcome of the Pacific War, but the terms of Japan's surrender.  With the Potsdam Declaration leaving any overt hands off Hirohito and with the Soviets poised to join the war, the initiation of the latter, without the dropping of the bombs, at least increased the chances that Japan would capitulate, since Japan was counting on Soviet help to broker a peace deal for them.  This was even the view expressed by Eisenhower. So, in the end, between 150,000 and 250,000 people, mostly civilians, had to die because we couldn't wait for Stalin to move in Manchuria and take a few weeks to see what would happen?   And regarding estimations of casualties as a result of a Kyushu invasion, they were all over the place at the time, and the larger estimates all assumed massive civilian resistance, which was, and still is, a matter of sheer speculation and which, I think, there are good reasons to believe would not have been so massive.

One of the things that always troubles me a bit in these kinds of debates are throwaway assessments like: "oh, those civilian casualties were horrific, but..."  I know this reaction is prompted by concerns that far more civilians would have died in a land invasion, and so I do have some sympathy for those who make recourse to them for that reason.  But since, given the historical realities, what should follow the word "but..." in assessments like those above are what the terms of Japan's surrender were going to look like, I can't help but think still that civilian war casualties really don't matter much to Americans as long as they're not our own.  "If they get us better surrender terms, then, well, too bad but ok."  But when we kill hundreds of thousands of civilians with atomic bombs on purpose just to improve surrender treaty terms, it's fairly hard for us to jump up and down with self-righteous indignation when other military forces target civilians.  What my dad, who was on an aircraft carrier on the way to Japan when the bombs were dropped, believed was that it's the job of military men to risk their lives for their country; it's not their job to barter for their own lives at the cost of civilian lives, even when those civilians live in the country you're at war with.  He called it "a mortal sin" to mass-murder civilians...and it is.  

I think opebo is really on to something in what he says about the use of the bombs "setting a tone" for the next half-century and more.  But, for me, in a moral sense, sometimes it's a very short journey from nationalism to barbarism, and, at the end of WWII, we crossed that line.  There is no question that the Japanese military crossed that line long before we did, given what they did in China and other parts of East Asia, as well as with their tactics on the battlefield.  But that didn't mean we had to cross that line too.                  

[TDAS04]

What would be the alternative to dropping these two bombs? Since the Japanese were nowhere near to surrender, would that be an invasion? Invasion, that would cost thousands of hundreds lives on both sides?

I've frequently heard "invasion wouldn't be nessesery, because the U.S. already controlled the air and bombings would make the Japanese quit at some point". Fair point, but it would take burning more and more cities (LeMay was very good at it), so it might have been far more deadly than two atomic bombs.

I'm not sure about drooping it on less populated area or demonstrating it on non-populated target. After all, it took two bombs to make Tokyo call it quits. I think Truman made a horrific, but right call.

Are you sure about the second bomb?  Japan was given only three days to respond to Hiroshima before the Nagasaki bomb ended 40,000 more lives.  After Nagasaki, we did give Japan five more days, after which they did surrender.

I voted for option 3 myself, although I would choose option 1 before 2.  The bombs did save far more lives ultimately, but I do question whether or not the one-two-punch was necessary for two big cities.  It depends on whether or not the quick use of the second bomb was absolutely necessary to send the message to Japan.

I do believe that something had to be done to prevent a ground invasion.  I'm fine with using math as a method to reduce potential casualties.  Still, care should be taken with regards to civilian life.

[TDAS04]

Dwight Eisenhower also had doubts.

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/hiroshima-nagasaki/opinion-eisenhower-bomb.htm

I do not know if he was correct.

[7,052,770]

Consider this:

The Hiroshima bomb was just a toy compared to what we had just 10 years later, much less now.  It's a good thing we learned just how awful nuclear weapons are in the 1940s before they became exponentially bigger and exponentially more awful.