Hiroshima debate?

Ashes said:
LeEnfield said.....

"Had the invasion gone ahead then we would have been fighting every man, woman and child in Japan and it could have turned into one of the bloodiest battles ever seen"

Thats correct.......
So back to my question again.

Why was it imperitive to invade sooner rather then later, and risk that fighting?

The country was on the verge of mass starvation and the infrastructure to wage war was rapidly collapsing, a few more months of 115,000 tons of bombs a month, and the country would hardly have the strength to defend itself.

It woulden't matter how much how many wanted to fight if they were so malnurished they could hardly stand up.

When General Hap Arnold came to the Marianas he told the men of the Twentieth Air Force [perhaps being slightly optomistic ] that a continuation of their operations would enable U.S. Army infantrymen to walk ashore in Japan with their rifles slung.

Even if thats an exaggeration, it would have been much easier going in later instead of earlier.

Perhaps there's a compelling reason out there, but I haven't seen it yet.

You don't get it. A People willing to crash planes and do anything to win, they would have fought to the last civilian. Have you seen the footage?
Why waste more American's lifes, prolong the war, and waste money and munitions when you have a bomb that could stop bloodshed it a few sort days?

The Japanese mindset of the time was that somewhat like today's terrorists, but for a different reason. 50,000 vs. 20,000,000. I would give the 50,000 so that the 20,000,000 would live.

You state the nation was starving. Why let the die off the death of starvation? We wanted to create as little "collateral damage" as possible.
 
Ashes.....One of the islands that America invaded on it's way across the Pacific, nearly the whole population killed them selfs rather than fall into the hand of the Americans. There were women holding babies jumping of cliffs to their deaths on the rocks below rather than become a prisoner of the Americans so do you honestly think that starving to death would worry them. You mentioned about the vast amount of bombs being dropped on Japan and this would have brought the Japanese to their knees. Well the B29's under General Lee May was dropping so many bombs that thew ships could not carry them across the Pacific quick enough and the bombing campaign had all but come to a halt. There was a Japanese Professor on television the other day saying that he thanked America for dropping the Atom bombs on Japan and bringing the war to a speedy close. As an eight year old he was trained to throw him self under a tank and explode the satchel charge he was carrying, the Japanese were training the children for this as they were much smaller and could get under the quicker.
 
Not to dampen the agrument but how do it get started? I mean this is apart of history that has happened, we can't change it. The only thing that we can do is to try and prevent it from happening in the future.

Thats just my opinion.

Back to the discussion!
 
Cadet Seaman.... this thread went of in this direction as some people thought it was wrong for America to drop the Atom bomb on Japan. They seemed to think that if they did nothing it would all come out right in the end. They seemed to think that Japan would have surrendered in short time any way and that the bomb should have never been used. I am of the opinion that the Japanese would have carried on fighting and the death toll would have far higher than the deaths caused by the Atom bomb.
 
LeEnfield said:
Cadet Seaman.... this thread went of in this direction as some people thought it was wrong for America to drop the Atom bomb on Japan. They seemed to think that if they did nothing it would all come out right in the end. They seemed to think that Japan would have surrendered in short time any way and that the bomb should have never been used. I am of the opinion that the Japanese would have carried on fighting and the death toll would have far higher than the deaths caused by the Atom bomb.


Ok, I happen to agree with you, read my post above the last.
 
Cadet Seaman probably didn't see my post which was.....
"Could I ask a question? If the Japanese didn't surrender by the invasion date, what would make it imperative to invade?

I've seen several reasons, and none seem very convincing."

Simply asking why not continue to bomb them until they surrender or starve, instead of invading and taking a million+ casualties?

And about wanting to create as little "collateral damage" as possible.

It was really the opposite, the Allies were trying to create as much collateral damage as possible.

The Allies hated the Japanese with a vengance, and with good reason after Pearl Harbour, the Bataan death march, the Burma railroad, the rape of Nanking etc, etc, and did'nt worry two hoots about "collateral damage" the U.S. 20th air force had been roaming up and down Japan fire bombing the heart out of just about every major Japanese city, burning men, women and children alive to the tune of about 500,000+ deaths.

Id sure hate to see "collateral damage" if that wasn't it.

LeEnfield says they would rather starve then surrender, well o.k. let them starve, better millions of Japanese starve then a million American casualties, would you agree? Although as I posted before, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey said they would have surrended probably before the invasion date, or by the end of December.

The only reason i've seen put forth were the danger of Japanese submarines, well except for the sinking of the unescorted Indianapolis heading home after delivering components of the atomic bomb, I think Japanese sub kills at that time, were negligible.

I think the best reason would have been political, rather then military.

But i'm not even sure about that one either.

Can some one put forth a compelling reason?

Id be interested in seeing it.
 
Ashes .......Just what would have happened if some of the German Radioactive material had got through to Japan. Now Japan was planning submarines with with hangers on deck, now this may sound far fetched but the British had already done this. What were they going to with subs, well there was a lot a talk about bring a plane to coast of America then launching the plane and then explode a dirty bomb over a large American City
 
Another reason were B-29 casualties, in the last series of raids the casualties were 0.9%
They could have bombed as long as they liked for very few casualties.

Back on the dropping of the atomic bombs, it was mentioned that some people thought it was wrong to drop the bombs on a beaten enemy at that time, well among those people were just about every top American commander in the Pacific, including................


General Dwight Eisenhower, expressing "grave misgivings" over Truman’s political decision to use the atomic bombs, notes in his memoirs:

Japan was already defeated … dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary (and) 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.


General Douglas MacArthur, was not consulted beforehand, but said afterward that there was no military justification for the bombings. The same opinion was expressed by Fleet Admiral William Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaits (commander of the UA.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials) and also Major General Curtis LeMay and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.

In 1948 Sec. of War Henry Stimson published his memoirs, ghost-written by McGeorge Bundy. He claimed the second bomb should not have been dropped so quickly after the first. He also said, "It is possible, in the light of the final surrender, that a clearer and earlier exposition of American willingness to retain the Emperor would have produced an earlier ending to the war". Stimson and Bundy continued, "Only on the question of the Emperor did Stimson take, in 1945, a conciliatory view; only on this question did he later believe that history might find that the United States, by its delay in stating its position, had prolonged the war." (Stimson & Bundy, pg. 628-629)
 
Back
Top