Enola Gay, heroism or insanity?

Don't understand the language its written in but I do know that Paul Tibbett's said he never lost a nights sleep over it . The part that amazes me is that the Japanese military wanted to fight on , now that's insanity .
 
I am sure we have had this conversation before it is written in Portuguese and assuming you use Firefox browser all you have to do is turn on your translator or right click on the text and select "Translate this page with Google translator" and you will get it in English or even American if you cant understand English.

The dropping of the Atomic bombs wasn't heroic in my opinion and it may have rated as insanity but it may have been a necessity to bring the war to an end.

- It was no more heroic than any other military action.
- Given that Japan was making peace overtures and on the verge of surrender anyway the dropping may have been insane especially since Japan pretty much got most of what it had asked for anyway (the retention of the Emperor).
- But from a military stand point I can understand why they dropped it, as a kid I once told my father that it was an unnecessary action and he chewed me out over it saying that as someone that was heading to join the invasion from the European theatre he is damn happy they did drop it.
 
I was not interested enough in the verbiage to get it translated , my comment more or less covered Tibbett's attitude he was a Real American icon .
 
The Japanese were making half ***** peace overtures, sure. Their conditions were no occupation, the Emperor gets to stay in charge, and they would get to put their own war criminals on trial. That wasn't going to fly. Heck, it took two nukes and the Soviets declaring war before the Emperor came to his senses, put his foot down, and ordered his military to stand down. And even then there was was unsuccesful attempt by some IJA officers to kidnap the Emperor and find the surrender recording he had made. The Emperor is lucky we needed him as a figurehead, or he'd have hung with Tojo and the rest of the class A war criminals.

But back to the OP. The Enola Gay's mission was no more... or less... heroic than any other long range bombing mission. But it was, IMO, and unfortunately, necessary. Had an invasion become necessary, the death toll on both sides would have dwarfed the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not to mention LeMay would have continued to try to firebomb them back to the stone age.
 
The Japanese were making half ***** peace overtures, sure. Their conditions were no occupation, the Emperor gets to stay in charge, and they would get to put their own war criminals on trial. That wasn't going to fly. Heck, it took two nukes and the Soviets declaring war before the Emperor came to his senses, put his foot down, and ordered his military to stand down. And even then there was was unsuccesful attempt by some IJA officers to kidnap the Emperor and find the surrender recording he had made. The Emperor is lucky we needed him as a figurehead, or he'd have hung with Tojo and the rest of the class A war criminals.

But back to the OP. The Enola Gay's mission was no more... or less... heroic than any other long range bombing mission. But it was, IMO, and unfortunately, necessary. Had an invasion become necessary, the death toll on both sides would have dwarfed the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not to mention LeMay would have continued to try to firebomb them back to the stone age.

I am not sure I agree with your first statement, the Japanese were making serious peace overtures to the Russians as they believed them to be neutral they could not be expected to know the Russians were not as neutral as they had hoped.
 
I am not sure I agree with your first statement, the Japanese were making serious peace overtures to the Russians as they believed them to be neutral they could not be expected to know the Russians were not as neutral as they had hoped.
I guess it all depends on how we define serious peace overtures. From everything I've read, the Japanese were not willing to back down on any of the conditions I noted in my previous post. The allies were not going to accept anything short of unconditional surrender (other than the pragmatic act of keeping the Emperor as a figurehead). Until the allies recieved that surrender, they were going to continue hitting the Japanese with everything thing they had in their arsenal.
 
All very true but then if you adopt that line it would also be fair to say that the Allies were not prepared to back down on "Unconditional surrender" yet they did by allowing the Emperor to stay in power.

I can see how the use of the atomic bomb was considered controversial as it was even a hard sell amongst allied Generals and politicians, for example

Ralph Bard Undersecretary of the Navy wrote:

Bard also asserted, "I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." He continued, "In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb."
War Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb, U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.



BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for President Truman and his advisors
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.


DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."
William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ
In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific
General Spaatz was the person who received the order for the Air Force to "deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945..."(Leslie Groves, Now It Can Be Told, pg. 308). In a 1964 interview, Spaatz explained:
"The dropping of the atomic bomb was done by a military man under military orders. We're supposed to carry out orders and not question them."
In the same interview, Spaatz referred to the Japanese military's plan to get better peace terms, and he gave an alternative to the atomic bombings:
"If we were to go ahead with the plans for a conventional invasion with ground and naval forces, I believe the Japanese thought that they could inflict very heavy casualties on us and possibly as a result get better surrender terms. On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place [and] that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time." (Herbert Feis Papers, Box 103, N.B.C. Interviews, Carl Spaatz interview by Len Giovannitti, Library of Congress).
ELLIS ZACHARIAS
Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence
Based on a series of intelligence reports received in late 1944, Zacharias, long a student of Japan's people and culture, believed the Japan would soon be ripe for surrender if the proper approach were taken. For him, that approach was not as simple as bludgeoning Japanese cities:
"...while Allied leaders were immediately inclined to support all innovations however bold and novel in the strictly military sphere, they frowned upon similar innovations in the sphere of diplomatic and psychological warfare."
Ellis Zacharias, The A-Bomb Was Not Needed, United Nations World, Aug. 1949, pg. 29.
Zacharias saw that there were diplomatic and religious (the status of the Emperor) elements that blocked the doves in Japan's government from making their move:
"What prevented them from suing for peace or from bringing their plot into the open was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender."
Ellis Zacharias, Eighteen Words That Bagged Japan, Saturday Evening Post, 11/17/45, pg. 17.

And of course there are more.
But the fact that these high ranking individuals who were there at the time knew that surrender was imminent and felt that the atomic bombs were unnecessary says a lot I think.
 
It says that there were wrong : the war was going on,thus everything that would shorten the war was justified .

Why was Ike waiting to 1963 to say what he thought in 1945?

Leahy ? He was deadly wrong : the bomb was not a barbarous weapon .

Bard said : I think : that's not an argument

Mac Arthur : we don't know what was his opinion, only what Manchester claimed what the opinion was of Mac Arthur .

Zacharias : he also is wrong : the point is NOT that Japan was willing to surrender on an uncertain day,the point is that the war was going on and that every day American and Allied soldiers were killed .If the Bomb saved the live on only one US/Allied soldier,its use was legitimate .

May I remind some people that even after the use of the bomb,the Japanese still were murdering US/Allied POWs?

If the bomb was not used and Japan capitulated one day later than it did in the OTL,a lot of American/Allied soldiers /POWs would have been killed/murdered .

It was the duty of Truman as commander-in-chief to save as most as possible the lives of his soldiers .

It was the duty of Truman to use the bomb .
 
If I am not wrong it was not the double of Mac,but Mac himself who proposed to use the bomb in Korea:if the use of the bomb was legitimate against the Koreans,why not against the Japanese ?:cool:
 
It says that there were wrong : the war was going on,thus everything that would shorten the war was justified .

Why was Ike waiting to 1963 to say what he thought in 1945?

Leahy ? He was deadly wrong : the bomb was not a barbarous weapon .

Bard said : I think : that's not an argument

Mac Arthur : we don't know what was his opinion, only what Manchester claimed what the opinion was of Mac Arthur .

Zacharias : he also is wrong : the point is NOT that Japan was willing to surrender on an uncertain day,the point is that the war was going on and that every day American and Allied soldiers were killed .If the Bomb saved the live on only one US/Allied soldier,its use was legitimate .

May I remind some people that even after the use of the bomb,the Japanese still were murdering US/Allied POWs?

If the bomb was not used and Japan capitulated one day later than it did in the OTL,a lot of American/Allied soldiers /POWs would have been killed/murdered .

It was the duty of Truman as commander-in-chief to save as most as possible the lives of his soldiers .

It was the duty of Truman to use the bomb .

I agree despite the actions of the Soviets and the Firebombing nothing brought about a direct conclusion to hostilities like the dropping of the 2 atomic weapons. They shocked Japan into surrendering in a way no Soviet invasion or fire bombing possible could have. One has to remember the Japanese really had no idea how many atomic weapons the US possessed and had never been subjected to a weapon of such severity. One could make comparisons that so many firebombs could create similar damage, but the comparison as to the destruction of that of a single nuclear device is null and void. Also considering the hundreds of thousands who suffered radiation poisoning created a whole new type of horror, never previously seen. The Japanese had lost the war long before the dropping of the atomic bombs. However they had no intentions of surrendering requardless of the losses incurred. They were finally shocked into surrender by a new and terrible weapon. Yes the US was justifies in using the bomb it saved far more lives than it took.
 
I agree despite the actions of the Soviets and the Firebombing nothing brought about a direct conclusion to hostilities like the dropping of the 2 atomic weapons. They shocked Japan into surrendering in a way no Soviet invasion or fire bombing possible could have. One has to remember the Japanese really had no idea how many atomic weapons the US possessed and had never been subjected to a weapon of such severity. One could make comparisons that so many firebombs could create similar damage, but the comparison as to the destruction of that of a single nuclear device is null and void. Also considering the hundreds of thousands who suffered radiation poisoning created a whole new type of horror, never previously seen. The Japanese had lost the war long before the dropping of the atomic bombs. However they had no intentions of surrendering requardless of the losses incurred. They were finally shocked into surrender by a new and terrible weapon. Yes the US was justifies in using the bomb it saved far more lives than it took.

I agree with that assessment.
 
I disagree with it entirely as the view is not borne out by fact...

Was Hiroshima Necessary?
Why the Atomic Bombings Could Have Been Avoided
By Mark Weber
On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About 90,000 people were killed immediately; another 40,000 were injured, many of whom died in protracted agony from radiation sickness. Three days later, a second atomic strike on the city of Nagasaki killed some 37,000 people and injured another 43,000. Together the two bombs eventually killed an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians.

Between the two bombings, Soviet Russia joined the United States in war against Japan. Under strong US prodding, Stalin broke his regime's 1941 non-aggression treaty with Tokyo. On the same day that Nagasaki was destroyed, Soviet troops began pouring into Manchuria, overwhelming Japanese forces there. Although Soviet participation did little or nothing to change the military outcome of the war, Moscow benefitted enormously from joining the conflict.

In a broadcast from Tokyo the next day, August 10, the Japanese government announced its readiness to accept the joint American-British "unconditional surrender" declaration of Potsdam, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler."

A day later came the American reply, which included these words: "From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the State shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." Finally, on August 14, the Japanese formally accepted the provisions of the Potsdam declaration, and a "cease fire" was announced. On September 2, Japanese envoys signed the instrument of surrender aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A Beaten Country

Apart from the moral questions involved, were the atomic bombings militarily necessary? By any rational yardstick, they were not. Japan already had been defeated militarily by June 1945. Almost nothing was left of the once mighty Imperial Navy, and Japan's air force had been all but totally destroyed. Against only token opposition, American war planes ranged at will over the country, and US bombers rained down devastation on her cities, steadily reducing them to rubble.

What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.

On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.

On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.

Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."

Japan Seeks Peace
Months before the end of the war, Japan's leaders recognized that defeat was inevitable. In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. When Germany capitulated in early May, the Japanese understood that the British and Americans would now direct the full fury of their awesome military power exclusively against them.

American officials, having long since broken Japan's secret codes, knew from intercepted messages that the country's leaders were seeking to end the war on terms as favorable as possible. Details of these efforts were known from decoded secret communications between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and Japanese diplomats abroad.

In his 1965 study, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (pp. 107, 108), historian Gar Alperovitz writes:
Although Japanese peace feelers had been sent out as early as September 1944 (and [China's] Chiang Kai-shek had been approached regarding surrender possibilities in December 1944), the real effort to end the war began in the spring of 1945. This effort stressed the role of the Soviet Union ...
In mid-April [1945] the [US] Joint Intelligence Committee reported that Japanese leaders were looking for a way to modify the surrender terms to end the war. The State Department was convinced the Emperor was actively seeking a way to stop the fighting.

A Secret Memorandum
It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.
In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

  • Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
  • Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
  • Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
  • Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
  • Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
  • Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):
The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.
 
Last edited:
Peace Overtures
In April and May 1945, Japan made three attempts through neutral Sweden and Portugal to bring the war to a peaceful end. On April 7, acting Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu met with Swedish ambassador Widon Bagge in Tokyo, asking him "to ascertain what peace terms the United States and Britain had in mind." But he emphasized that unconditional surrender was unacceptable, and that "the Emperor must not be touched." Bagge relayed the message to the United States, but Secretary of State Stettinius told the US Ambassador in Sweden to "show no interest or take any initiative in pursuit of the matter." Similar Japanese peace signals through Portugal, on May 7, and again through Sweden, on the 10th, proved similarly fruitless.

By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."

By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.

On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity."
The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."

On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."
Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved."

Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."

In spite of this, on July 26 the leaders of the United States and Britain issued the Potsdam declaration, which included this grim ultimatum: "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces and to provide proper and adequate assurance of good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

Commenting on this draconian either-or proclamation, British historian J.F.C. Fuller wrote: "Not a word was said about the Emperor, because it would be unacceptable to the propaganda-fed American masses." (A Military History of the Western World [1987], p. 675.)
America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.
The sad irony is that, as it actually turned out, the American leaders decided anyway to retain the Emperor as a symbol of authority and continuity. They realized, correctly, that Hirohito was useful as a figurehead prop for their own occupation authority in postwar Japan.

Justifications

President Truman steadfastly defended his use of the atomic bomb, claiming that it "saved millions of lives" by bringing the war to a quick end. Justifying his decision, he went so far as to declare: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

This was a preposterous statement. In fact, almost all of the victims were civilians, and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

If the atomic bomb was dropped to impress the Japanese leaders with the immense destructive power of a new weapon, this could have been accomplished by deploying it on an isolated military base. It was not necessary to destroy a large city. And whatever the justification for the Hiroshima blast, it is much more difficult to defend the second bombing of Nagasaki.

All the same, most Americans accepted, and continue to accept, the official justifications for the bombings. Accustomed to crude propagandistic portrayals of the "Japs" as virtually subhuman beasts, most Americans in 1945 heartily welcomed any new weapon that would wipe out more of the detested Asians, and help avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Americans who were fighting the Japanese in bitter combat, the attitude was "Thank God for the atom bomb." Almost to a man, they were grateful for a weapon whose deployment seemed to end the war and thus allow them to return home.

After the July 1943 firestorm destruction of Hamburg, the mid-February 1945 holocaust of Dresden, and the fire-bombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, America's leaders -- as US Army General Leslie Groves later commented -- "were generally inured to the mass killing of civilians." For President Harry Truman, the killing of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians was simply not a consideration in his decision to use the atom bomb.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
 
I assume that you don't know who is Mark Weber : he is the chief of Stormfront .

Now, I assume that everyone know what is Stormfront .

Well, I hope .
 
We must take the casualty figures the American suffered during the invasion of Iwo jima and Okinawa under consideration. If you were a political leader or a military leader deciding what next after suffering those losses and you have something new in your arsenal.

Another fact we need to consider is; how often do two warring parties communicate? It is easy for us to analyse the data available, but during a war we cannot do so.
 
I assume that you don't know who is Mark Weber : he is the chief of Stormfront .

Now, I assume that everyone know what is Stormfront .

Well, I hope .

So what, you can use his views to counter his interpretation of the facts but not the facts themselves, just because Hitler told you there was 24 hours in a day doesn't make it wrong.

If Japan made those attempts to bring an end to the war then you have to question the use of the bomb.

One of the mistakes people make is that they look at the messenger to decide the validity of the message.
 
If Japan made those attempts to bring an end to the war then you have to question the use of the bomb.

The military who effectively controlled Japan had no intention of surrendering regardless of Soviet actions and or firebombing. Whatever political maneuvering that was done by Japan meant nothing as these people were paper tigers and were not capable of reigning in the Japanese military, who lived by the Bushido code as was demonstrated by the low rate of Japanese prisoners taken during the war. These people cared little for how people were made to suffer, including their own. Surrender simply wasn't in there vocabulary. Only intercession by their highly esteemed God-like Emperor Hirohito was able to bring about the long sought after peace (who himself should have been tried as a war criminal). Who feared the US had many more such atomic weapons, and had no way of knowing we didn't.
 
It was the right,the duty of the US military and political leadership to continue the war til he was over by an inconditional surrender of Japan .

Attempts from Japan to bring an end to the war mean that Japan continued the war,killing allied soldiers and murdering allied POWs,forcing the allies to kill Japanese soldiers,which resulted in the death of Japanese civilians .

Hiroshima was a Japanese military HQ and a lot of Japanese military were killed .It was a military target . That civilians also were killed was the fault of the civilians,because they lived in a military target,besides without the support of the civilians,Japan would have surrendered very quickly after PH : Japan had sowed the wind, it would reap the storm .
 
Back
Top