Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Justified?

J

Jeff Simmons

Active member
There are probably more than a million different opinions on whether the use of atomic weapons on Japan was justified. I haven't been able to decide in which camp I belong.

Those in the "justified" camp usually argue that it was a far better alternative than landing troops on the shores of Japan and fighting it out "D-Day style." It has been estimated that such an invasion would have caused millions of casualties, both American and Japanese. It was envisioned that Japan would fight until they had just one last man armed with a sharp stick; after all, 110,000 Japanese were killed when the US took Okinawa, yet only a handful surrendered. And the conventional bombing of Tokyo (in which more Japanese had died than in either atomic attack) didn't seem to be enough to coax out a surrender.

On the other hand, Japan was near to surrender as it was, ie, what remained of their once-powerful naval fleet was, by mid-1945, rusting in the docks because they couldn't get the oil or fuel to sail it. There was a severe shortage of just about everything. I read once that Japan had actually made overtures to Russia to cut a surrender deal several weeks before the bombings. I also read an estimation that Japan would have probably surrendered by September 1945 without a costly invasion.

Then there are military historians who say the bombs were used to show American capabilities to Stalin. However, when told of the "new bomb" by Truman, Stalin didn't seem surprised at all; the best guess is that he already knew about it.

I'm just seeking new points of view.
 
There must be at least one million ongoing threads on this subject.

What possible new thoughts can exist?

How about something novel-like AK vs M 16-or how wonderfil tiger tanks are?

Sorry, but that's just my response.
 
Re: Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Justified?

Jeff Simmons said:
I read once that Japan had actually made overtures to Russia to cut a surrender deal several weeks before the bombings. I also read an estimation that Japan would have probably surrendered by September 1945 without a costly invasion.
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What is seldom talked about is the riots on Japanese Army bases for the refusal to surrender. The efforts to kidnap the emperor in an effort to prevent him from doing something like dishonorably surrendering. Many in Japan felt that Japan would be better off without Japanese people rather than lived in a Japan which had foreign soldiers on their soil.
The Japanese army had planned to use chemical warfare agents. If they did the USAAF was prepared to load up B-29s with chemical bombs. Estimates are at least five million Japanese civilians would die in this aspect of the battle.
The Japanese figured correctly in estimating the invasion would come in early November, they had estimated correctly the beaches the US landings would take place on. They saved 8,000 kamikazi aircraft and stored mostly caves. A little over 100 midget subs and over 1,000 speed boats (stored in caves) to be packed with explosive with orders to run into landing craft. The month of November is the foggiest month in southern Japan, making interception difficult. The effort was to kill several divisions of US troops before they hit the beach!
Yes, Japan made overtures to the USSR for a peace accord. Among the conditions were, the Emperor woulds retain his throne, no foreign soldiers stationed on any home islands, and 'IF' there were any war crimes committed, the Japanese government would investigate and try them! After the surrender, Gen. MacArthur decided to retain the emperor because of his ability to pacify the Japanese people. The other conditions that were totally unacceptable to the USA or its Allies.

Jeff Simmons said:
Then there are military historians who say the bombs were used to show American capabilities to Stalin.
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That is also true. President Truman felt from the way the USSR took control over Poland which was against all that the USSR had agreed to with the USA and, UK. Despite this, President Truman briefly entertained the idea of sharing A-bomb technology. After the war in an effort to help the USSR less fearful of the west. The British sharing jet engine technology, the USA shared radar technology!

Jeff Simmons said:
when told of the "new bomb" by Truman, Stalin didn't seem surprised at all; the best guess is that he already knew about it.
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Of course he was not surprised because among the first group of scientist at Los Alamos, NM, one was a Soviet spy. The USSR knew a lot about the US nuclear bomb.

I would like to find out something about the Soviet Army's plans to invade the northern Japanese islands? US plans have been in the public sector for many years.
 
I wouldn't have been surprised if the Soviets knew about the bomb before Truman did. He was kept in the dark for a long time.

As for the bomb saving lives, it probably did, as strange as that seems. The island battles were just a taste of what would come, with civilians jumping into the ocean to avoid being overtaken by the Americans; the Americans and Soviets would have had to kill every last one of them, and would have paid dearly for it in the process. I estimate it may have prolonged the war into 1947, because the Japanese would fight to the death for every fraction of an inch of soil they surrendered. Plus, combining that with weeding them out of the mountains and caves, which could have taken decades, it would have been really nasty. Heck, there were holdouts from captured islands that didn't surrender until the 70s; imagine if the war had gone longer. The bombings saved a monstrous number of lives on both sides, because even the hard line Japanese military officials knew that a war where one enemy bomb could take out an entire city was not a war worth fighting. If nothing else, is was extremely demoralizing.

It was the right move to make.
 
For years critics of the decision have asserted that the use of nuclear weapons was unnecessary because Japan was so weakened militarily that they realized their situation was hopeless. The revisionists argue that Japan was seeking to negotiate a surrender prior to the bombings. But information from top secret intelligence documents by the U.S. code breaking operation called "Magic" and the British operation called "Ultra" that was declassified in the mid-1990s disclosed a decidedly different situation.

American code breakers had been deciphering Japanese military and diplomatic messages since just before the Battle of Midway. By the summer of 1945, "Magic" was deciphering millions of messages. From these messages President Truman and U.S. military leaders concluded that Japan would not agree to an unconditional surrender.

The revisionists insist otherwise. They point out that in the summer of 1945 the Japanese were seeking a compromised peace to end the war through their envoy to Russia. But based on intercepted Japanese communications, what Japan was trying to do was make a deal to keep the Soviet Union out of the war. What the Japanese military rulers really wanted was a deal that would allow their brutal military regime that started the war to stay in power, something the U.S. and the Allies would never have accepted.

Yet the revisionists persist that the primary obstacle that kept Japan from agreeing to an unconditional surrender was the perception that Emperor Hirohito would not be allowed to continue as emperor. According to the revisionists, the Japanese were so loyal to the Emperor that they would have fought to the death to protect him. While that may have been true for the majority of the Japanese, some of the top military leaders did not hold the Emperor in such high esteem. In fact, when Emperor Hirohito announced his decision to surrender, a group of hard-line Japanese military leaders attempted a coup to overthrow him. The coup failed.

Finally, according to the revisionists, the use of the A-bombs were unnecessary because Japan's military was so devastated that the war would have ended in a matter of weeks anyway. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith even asserted that the use of the A-bombs only shortened the war by two or three weeks at most. But Galbraith and other revisionists couldn't have been more wrong.

The Japanese had been sheltering their resources in anticipation of an American landing. At the time of the bombings, Japan had over 12,000 aircraft for use against U.S. forces. In terms of land forces, some post war estimates indicate that the Japanese defense forces on Kyushu, the first island targeted for invasion, may have outnumbered U.S. forces by a ratio of 3:2. Typically, an invasion force must outnumber defenders by a ratio of 3:1 to be successful. In addition, the Japanese had been training civilians, including children, for attacks against U.S. troops.

The Japanese plan was to inflict such heavy losses that the war weary Americans would seek a negotiated peace. And had the U.S. gone forward with the plans to land on the Kyushu, they would have suffered horrendous casualties. Pre-invasion casualty estimates anticipated the loss of from 100,000 to as many as 1 million American soldiers and from 5-10 million Japanese military and civilian deaths. It has been estimated that for every month that the war continued, between 250,000 to 400,000 Asian civilians still under Japanese occupation would have died.

Revisionists dismiss these estimates as justification for using the A-bombs. But as Dr. James Tent, a professor of history at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, points out, such a dismissal is indicative of the sheer arrogance of the revisionists who, decades after the fact and far removed from the reality of the situation, would presume to judge those who had to make those decisions.

While the revisionists can second-guess the use of such catastrophic weapons on primarily civilian targets, the fact remains that the use of the atomic bombs against Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought about the end of the war much sooner than any of the other alternatives would have and in so doing saved millions of lives. Given that the Japanese were already responsible for 17 million deaths, it is not hard to conclude that using atomic weapons to end the war was justified.
 
the revisionists are a bunch of:mad: :the bomb saved a lot of American lives,and also (but this was irrelevant those days )a lot of Japanese lives ;the alternative for the bomb was :invasion and-of continious classic bombardments( with million of casualties),but then,the revisionists would claim the US should have used the bomb:shock:
 
People seem to forget that more Japanese were killed on the fire bombs attack on Tokyo than were killed by both Atomic bombs. So why is there all this wringing of hands about the use of the Atom bombs. Even after the second bomb had been dropped the Japanese Military were looking at staging a coup to keep the war going.
The Japanese were looking at a surrender but on their terms and we all know what happened in Germany after WW1. The Germans then considered that they had not lost the war but had been sold down the river by their leaders and then started WW2. As you can gather I think America was right to drop the Atom bombs and they saved millions of lives by ending the war.
 
If not used...

I wonder what the current world situation would be like if the atomic bomb had been developed but never used by anyone. The twin attacks on Japan did, in fact, create a deterrent that has lasted 65 years. However, I also wonder if that deterrent will quell nations like Iran and North Korea.
 
Thing to remember about starving Japan into surrender. How many of the over a million slave laborers from China, Korea and elsewhere would have died as they where already on short rations. and how many others the elderly children , poor etc would have to die befor the leaders called it quits?
 
TRose said:
Thing to remember about starving Japan into surrender. How many of the over a million slave laborers from China, Korea and elsewhere would have died as they where already on short rations. and how many others the elderly children , poor etc would have to die befor the leaders called it quits?
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I am not sure that this is the case as Japan had already approached the Russians to help broker an end to hostilities, the problem there was that there was no territory to be gained by peace so Stalin never progressed with the peace negotiations.

In the end I think dropping the bombs were justified given what the Western allies knew but had Stalin been a little more honest there would have been no need to drop them at all.
 
good point

Good point, TRose. I'm also sitting here wondering what would have happened if the Japanese knew we were out of bombs. Would they have carried on sacrificing their own people until we built a third, or even fourth? The fact that they surrendered after two is, in my opinion, one of the greatest bluffs of all time.
 
MontyB said:
I am not sure that this is the case as Japan had already approached the Russians to help broker an end to hostilities, the problem there was that there was no territory to be gained by peace so Stalin never progressed with the peace negotiations.

In the end I think dropping the bombs were justified given what the Western allies knew but had Stalin been a little more honest there would have been no need to drop them at all.
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Of the Revisionist theories, the most common one is that Truman simply wanted to impress Stalin by dropping the atomic bomb. This is simply not the case. The most imperative thing on Truman’s mind as he let the bombings go forward was that they would prevent a land invasion of Kyushu and the massive loss of life, both American and Japanese, that would accompany such an invasion. Furthermore, if Truman had wanted to impress Stalin, he would not have told Stalin that the United States had “produced a bomb of extraordinary power.” Instead, he would have let the shock have its effect on both the Soviet Union and on Japan.
 
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The Japanese wanted to talk about an agreed armistice, but what they wanted to do was hang on to many of captured territories as they could. It had been agreed by all the allied leaders that they would only accept an unconditional surrender from any of the Axis forces
 
hindsight

I think a lot of the "hand-wringing" that has taken place since August of 1945 has been a result of the sheer horror of atomic warfare. Yes, it did save the lives of thousands of invading Americans and defensive Japanese. And yes, more Japanese were indiscriminately killed by the firebombing of Tokyo. And it is true that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate industrial targets. But there is something about nuclear weapons that, to me, is spooky (can't think of a better way to describe the feeling). Small bombs by comparison to today's megaton bombs, they killed thousands of men, women and children, and left countless others with horrific burns. People who were there recall people's skin melting away, dangling off, and no holes in their heads other than gasping mouths. And for years afterward, thousands of people died from wounds or radiation poisoning. The subsequent generation also suffered from a high rate of birth defects.

The main reason Japan didn't agree to an unconditional surrender before the atomic attacks was that they wanted to maintain their emperor. What makes that ironic is that when the peace treaty was signed, it allowed the Japanese to do just that. I think that if the Japanese knew the emperor could stay on the throne after surrender, that surrender would have come within a matter of weeks without an American invasion and without the use of the atomic bombs.
 
Well Jeff
The question is if Japan's military leaders would allow the emperor to surrender. Loyalty to the emperor was an absolute in the Japanese military, but so was the refusal to surrender, and now that the two had come into conflict, open rebellion was a possible result. The emperor recorded a message in which he personally accepted the Allied surrender terms, to be broadcast over Japanese radio. This way everyone in Japan would know that surrender was the emperor's personal will. Some within the Japanese military actually attempted to steal this recording before it could be broadcast, while others attempted a more general military coup in order to seize power and continue the war. Other elements of the Japanese military remained loyal to the emperor. The Minister of War, General Anami Korechika, personally supported continuing the war, but he also could not bring himself to openly rebel against his emperor. The strength of his dilemma was such that he opted for suicide as the only honorable way out. In the end, his refusal to assist the coup plotters was instrumental in their defeat by elements within the military that remained loyal to the emperor.
 
the emperor and surrender

If the emperor called for surrender and a military coup took over the government, whom do you believe the general population would have supported? I believe the war-weary, hungry and tired Japanese people would have overwhelmingly supported the emperor, leaving the coup leaders flipping in the wind.
 
Jeff Simmons said:
If the emperor called for surrender and a military coup took over the government, whom do you believe the general population would have supported? I believe the war-weary, hungry and tired Japanese people would have overwhelmingly supported the emperor, leaving the coup leaders flipping in the wind.
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I´m not so sure.

On May 15, 1932 eleven young Naval Officers attempted a coup d’état, attacking the prime minister's residence and killed the then Prime Minister of Japan, Inukai Tsuyoshi This act was one of the main reasons Japan's party-based government ended. After this the military became an influential voice in the ruling of the country and so real control did lie with the military, behind a front formed by the Emperor and the Government. In 1940, all political parties were ordered to dissolve into the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, forming a single party state based on totalitarian values. Even so, there was much entrenched opposition from the government bureaucrats, and the military was still unable to do away with the last vestiges of party politics. This was partly due to the fact that the military itself was not a monolithic structure, but was rent internally with its own political factions. Even Japan's wartime Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, had difficulty controlling portions of his own military.

So if General Anami Korechika, had supported the rebels, the war would have continued and it wouldn’t matter who the general population supported since Japan was a military totalitarian state.
 
when things get bad enough

I agree with your premise that the war may have continued seeing that Japan was a totalitarian state at the time (interestingly enough, most people see Germany as totalitarian, but not Japan).

However, throughout history, we've seen that when things get bad enough for the proletariat, they will take matters into their own hands. The most clear example of this is the Russian revolution of 1917 (the process of which began in 1905). The Russian people were war-weary, hungry and bleeding to death. Lenin told them what they wanted to hear ("Peace, land a bread") and soon the royal family was dead. Then they pulled out of the war.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is ideas of revolution turn into whispers of revolution which turn into shouts of revolution and then the actual coup; one recent example was the overthrow of the Romanian dictatorship in the 90s. I maintain that this may have been one possible scenario for Japan if the people felt the war wasn't worth fighting anymore.

Just my opinion...
 
Hello Naddoður,

I do not see myself as being a revisionist - by meerly questioning the need for these A-bombs.

I would say that it is a proven fact - that Japan was willing to negotiate a surrender - they opposed the unconditional surrender only due to the utmost important factor of the Emperor.
If one understands Japanese culture - it is very eay to undestand. Also killing the Primeminister in 1932 is not at all the same as wanting to kill a God.

Magic encoding clearly documented the sole issue in regards to the Emperor.

What many people also do not seem to realize is that, Hirohito wasn't the innocent Bonzai caretaker - but the main culprit behind the war - as such he had all reasons to personally fear - unconditional surrender.

Even McArthur later stated - why did we use the A-Bomb if after all we did agree to leave him untouched and more or less in his power-position.

Now besides the expected Allied cassulties - that called for an alternative - either ongoing negotiations (acceptance of not taking Hirohito to face a warcriminal court) or a swift ending of the war via the nukes.

In order to convience the Japanese - a target such as a remote area would have sufficed in my opinion - but Pearl and the war demanded its revange, so a city respectivly two cities were chosen.

The other overlooked factor was the desperate medical and food situation in Japan. It is realistically calculated IMHO, that if Japan would have surrendered in let's say December, an estimated 1 million Japanese would have died due to the afore mentioned issues.

Taking that into account the implementation of the nukes prevented far more cassulties amongst the Japanese civilian population - then it took.

If however the Americans would have agreed to accept the "Emperor" issue (which later they did) it is also very feasable IMHO that Japan would have capitulated in a timeframe of 3-4 weeks around the nuke drops.

But somehow the USA wasn't willing to wait another 3-4 weeks in regards to forwarding a final proposal (incl. the Emperor issue). So we will never know - if the drops could have been avoidable.

It was simply - you Bast... attacked us and now it is payback time and not negotiation time - which I do not have a problem with - plus some other reasons only Wilson would know.

Afterall the Japanese and their beastly cruelty was known - and they couldn't be bothered about having murdered more then 20,000,000 Chinese either.

Regards
Kruska
 
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