Twilight of the Bomb

merbs writes: On the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb, Motherboard's Brian Merchant toured its crater with one of the last living Manhattan Project scientists. Here's the inside story of the road to the bomb, with the 90-year-old Murray Peshkin—the youngest man to work on the Project that built the bomb, and the first to set foot in its crater. From the story: "There are still nine nuclear nations that, between them, have stockpiled 16,300 weapons. And this network of decades-old nuclear armaments, some of which are still aimed at various strategic choke points around the globe, leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility. Before all that, though, the atom bomb was one of the most successful science experiments of all time. It was the product of billions of dollars in government spending, hundreds of the world’s top scientists working in concert, in secret, in a city built from scratch in the desert, and a bygone patriotism united by common, Manichean cause: stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese."

Comments

It is what it is

[TWX]

The United States is very good at estimating military casualties. It's necessary when war is waged on a huge scale, and good numbers are needed if the war effort is to be as efficient as possible.

The United States had a million Purple Hearts manufactured to award to the soldiers expected to be killed or wounded in action in the invasion of Japan. They're still using that stock today, after Korea, after Vietnam after Grenada, after Panama, after Afghanistan, after Iraq.

Even at the highest estimated death toll, less than a quarter of the number of people died due to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as would have been killed or wounded on just the American side of a full invasion of Japan.

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either

Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime. Curtis LeMay was man enough to recognise that strategic bombing, that is the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets to break the will of the enemy was a war crime. And he would have ended as a criminal had he not been on the victorious side. History and law is written by the victors always. And many times this skews the moral analysis of the events.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime.

It is only a crime if you lose...

No, that isn't sarcasm... it is the truth... what is a "crime" is determined by the winner...

There are really no rules in war, either you win, in which case anything you did is ok, or you lose, in which case it doesn't matter how nice you were about it...

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The end does not justify the means. Regardless of the excuses, the fact remains that the United States is the only entity to have used nuclear weapons on civilians.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime.

To follow up on this point... lets say, for the sake of discussion, that we all agree that it is a crime...

Ok, fair enough... all that means is that you don't do it... unless you really, really have to...

The ends do not justify the means, the vast majority of the time... but sometimes, in rare cases, they do... when anything becomes acceptable, when you must win...

In WWII, that was one of those times... we had to win that war, at any cost... which is why we carpet bombed cites. The nukes were just an easier way to do it, but our fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than each nuke did (200,000 to 80,000).

Should we, as a matter of course, carpet bomb cities? No, we should not. But in that case, we had to, the Nazis and Imperial Japan had to be stopped, no matter the cost. Had we failed, the forces of evil would have marched all over the face of the Earth and we'd have entered another dark ages for humanity.

Re:It is what it is

[Camel Pilot]

The 80K number would be dwarfed by the civilian deaths as the result of a full scale invasion of Japan.

Re:It is what it is

[cold fjord]

That isn't so much sarcasm as it is simply wrong. What constitutes a war crime is determined by treaty and the customary laws of war. Threat of retaliation is a recognized means of encouraging compliance with the law of war by the enemy. The US has prosecuted its own service members for war crimes as well as war criminals from among the enemy.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

And doing so resulting in saving millions of Japanese lives that would have been lost in an invasion without surrender. Nuclear weapons are just another piece of technology that kills, they aren't magic that condemns the souls of people killed by them to hell.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime

Not necessarily. Consider the situation that existed during WWII. The entire populations and economies of the belligerent nations were fully mobilized in service of the war effort. This full mobilization and total commitment gave rise to the term "Total War". In such cases every person, whether wearing the uniform and fighting, or working to produce war materials or otherwise assisting the war effort is arguably a legitimate target. During WWII this would have included virtually the entire adult population of every nation fighting. Strategic bombing was not a precisely targeted instrument, but as long as the focus of the bombing raids wasn't the preschool outside of town it was arguably legitimate.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Threat of retaliation is a recognized means of encouraging compliance with the law of war by the enemy.

The enemy can't retaliate if they lose, now can they?

I'm quite sure some people in Japan consider the fire bombing of Tokyo a war crime, but they haven't been able to do anything about it, now have they?

I don't say that casually... we won, they lost... we executed many of their officers for various war crimes... yes, we did a few of ours as well, but no one major... a few token gestures to get people to say what you said...

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> No, that isn't sarcasm... it is the truth... what is a "crime" is determined by the winner...

It's delusion.

And one day, you'll have to face reality, because it's pursuing you, walking non-stop, day and night, until it finally faces you.

And then you'll cry -- and crying will bring understanding and that will bring a little consolation in that things cannot be changed, but somehow, someone learned a lesson that day, even if at an incredible cost.

This is so huge it's useless to try to hide it or fool yourself. There's no escape from reality. But we can outgrow that and by growing we'll understand that what has been done was the result of a lack of civilization on our part. That will make us humbler and less prone to solving things without proper dialogue.

Japan itself did horrible things and it's guilty and victim at the same time. If we let it, I guess it could teach us a lot.

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender. This idea that it was some sort of victim is revisionism pure and simple.

Re:It is what it is

[Camel Pilot]

The end does not justify the means.

In war it does... You would have prefered a much higher body? more suffering? more destruction? If you were in a troop transport on the way to execute Operation Olympic you might have thought otherwise. If you were in the way of Japanese conquest where over 100000 noncombatants were killed per month (reference Gideon Rose) you might have thought otherwise. If you were a Japanese peace advocate who was under the constant threat of assassination you would have thought otherwise. The Japanese peace advocates even cheered the bomb because they knew it was what was necessary to take the power out of the hands of evil militarist who were prepared to sacrifice every Japanese man, woman and child.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the very young will not understand.

Because we won the war, our children now have the luxury to question it.

It is testament to how successful we were, so just sit back and smile at the children's comments and raise a silent toast to those who didn't make it.

Re:It is what it is

[someoneOtherThanMe]

In a full-scale war like WWII, most of the soldiers are just civilians drafted into military service, or else they be shot. So killing 80 000 Japanese soldiers would not really be that much better.

Re:It is what it is

[Orgasmatron]

There weren't 80,000 civilians in either of those cities. I'll quote, and then link to, an extensively documented discussion on the topic:

To start with, the lions share of the population (basically everyone between roughly fifteen and forty-five) were conscripted. Furthermore, even those not falling under this classification were trained to attack soldiers with anything they can get their hands on. Even small children were taught to strap bombs on themselves and roll under tanks. This is why I insisted at the outset on the distinction between "combatants" and "non-combatants" and thus be properly viewed as unlawful combatants and not "civilians" in the proper sense of the latter term.

http://rerum-novarum.blogspot....
http://rerum-novarum.blogspot....

Re:It is what it is

[cold fjord]

You may recall that it was the civilized world that would have needed to retaliate against Imperial Japan.

The question isn't what some random people in Japan consider to be a war crime, the question is what is the law, and was it violated? If it was violated, were there mitigating circumstances?

How many Rapes of Nanking did the Allies commit? How many Unit 731s did the Allies have that were experimenting on prisoners? Where were the extermination camps of the Allied powers? The Allies had fewer people deserving punishment because they weren't engaging in the sort of wholesale barbarism that were part of the Aixs nation's practices.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Dream on. And give me your lunch money.

Re:It is what it is

[dbIII]

The United States is very good at estimating military casualties

The large numbers soldiers that froze to death in Korea not long after due to a failure to supply equipment demonstrate that the reality is far, far less than the omnipotence suggested.
The death toll may well have been enormous, especially if it ended up with US vs USSR squabbles on Japanese soil as was expected by some, but ultimately we can only really guess today based on far more information that was available at the time. They just did not know. It may have been like the allies in Italy with very little local resistance or it may have been Stalingrad style house to house fighting all the way.

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.

It was Truman and his advisors that made the choice for both bombs, so if there is any fault it lies there. There is plenty to justify the first bombing, even against civilians, since to be frank it was supposed to be a blatant demonstration the the USA would go as far as the mass slaughter of innocents to get the job done if that is what it took. The second is argued over at length on both sides of the issue by people who know far more about the topic than anyone on this site.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

The Allies had fewer people deserving punishment because they weren't engaging in the sort of wholesale barbarism that were part of the Aixs nation's practices.

Perhaps, but we still sentenced people to prison for doing the exact same thing that we did.

Karl DÃnitz was sent to prison for sinking allied ships without warning, yet even at his trial, Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the U.S. entered the war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

So we sent someone to prison for 10 years for doing the exact same thing that we were doing.

What we did we do to Nimitz? We named a line of carriers after him and called him a war hero.

There are other similar examples... Did we send anyone to prison for fire bombing German cities for example?

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

The question isn't what some random people in Japan consider to be a war crime, the question is what is the law, and was it violated? If it was violated, were there mitigating circumstances?

At this level, what is "the law" doesn't seem to amount to a whole lot...

Look at modern times... Between the NSA spying on our allies (Germany for example) and spying on our own citizens, it doesn't appear that modern governments care too much about this either...

How about Bashar al-Assad of Syria? The evidence is amazingly clear that he used chemical weapons against civilians, crossing what Obama called "a clear redline". Yet what has anyone really done about it?

Nothing... or nothing that has had any real effect...

The law works best when you have a larger force that you can call, such as the police, when someone is breaking it. When nations do it, there is no such entity.

Re:It is what it is

[TapeCutter]

Conveniently forgetting Stalin and his camps were a major part of the allied forces? It was called the Russian front and it was the most brutal and inhumane battle fields of the war, both to their own people and to the enemy. Fact is all sides act like barbarians in all out war, none can hold their head high, the firebombing of Dresden and other European cities and the nukes on Japan were truly barbaric acts, purposefully designed to kill large numbers of civilians, each of these events slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in a very short time. The fact that the other side perpetrated barbaric acts such as the Burma railway, and gas chambers, is not a valid excuse.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

... what is a "crime" is determined by the winner...

Not quite: There are rules to warfare with a big one being 'obey orders', which was somehow temporarily suspended in 1946, perfectly supporting your "it doesn't matter how nice you were about it" argument. Those rules also say Dick Cheney and friends are war criminals. But the USA doesn't prosecute their own leaders (treason is the only exception); a revealing fact about a country that fought to leave the abuses of royalty and monarchy. Likewise, none of the member countries of the ICC have tried to arrest Dick Cheney. When a first-world military is involved, no-one will "bell the cat".

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be silly.

Re:It is what it is

[davester666]

The US gov't tried and executed Japanese soldiers for doing to their POWs what their own soldiers [and non-soldiers, ie, the CIA] did to their prisoners.

Only they went "oh, no. totally different. we call that an enhanced interrogation technique. not torture at all. certainly not a war crime, as these enemy combatants aren't in uniform. in fact, they don't officially exist."

Re:It is what it is

[TapeCutter]

Feynman, who worked on the Bomb, suffered psychological problems after the bomb was dropped, at first he celebrated the bombing of Hiroshima with every one else on the project but quickly became angry at himself for "not noticing" the goal of the project had changed. The original (and rational) goal was to develop a bomb before Hitler did, ending the war with Japan did not come up until after Germany had already surrendered. He also had just lost his wife, he fell into a deep nihilism, he became convinced that planning for tomorrow was futile because it was all going to be vaporised. There's an interview with him discussing this on YouTube, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find it.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> And give me your lunch money.

Sure, no problem, here it is.

You can even be oblivious to what I think, but you cannot do anything about it...

In war, you do what you need to do to win. Anything more than that is excess, it's inhuman. You didn't go to war to do that, if we want to become anything of worth, we cannot simply exterminate others because they're different (or the enemy). Doing that is the same thing we abhor in gulags or execution camps.

Please understand: I'm not thinking I'm above anyone else. We're all the same stuff and anything which has been done, maybe my country would do it, too. The problem is not finding someone to blame. What is important is that we have to use all means available to avoid killing innocent people next time.

People say two bombs were necessary to stop the war... Really? How could Japan possibly surrender with just one bomb if they had no time to think and blam! ...there comes the second one.

And what if they had no means to communicate among themselves? Would these people send 10 bombs to 10 cities? Or how many?

This is like torture, just not done against a person but against a country. Winning is not enough, you have to make a point. Everyone has to understand that you didn't start it (it was the Germans and their allies, including the Japanese) and everyone has to see your moral grounds, those values created by those folks who decided there was going to be a new country and made a great document to register such values (the Declaration of Independence).

It changed the world.

If you think this is just "dreaming", maybe you forgot your obligation to pass this onto the next generations. That sucks...

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for nuking Japan was that otherwise the Soviets would gain greater influence in the region. If reducing deaths was the objective, the Allies would have accepted Japan's surrender attempts.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> Feynman, who worked on the Bomb, suffered psychological problems

He was a genius, I don't consider he had "psychological problems". He just understood the reality that some fools don't want to see even now. And even more, if you took American folks from 1900, they too would have problems.

My consolation is that we didn't really knew what we were doing...

Re:It is what it is

[Darinbob]

Add in the fire bombing of Tokyo and Dresden. As far as the bomb went, I think most of the casualties were caused by the fires than by the blast, because a lot of fires were ignited and then a huge wind came up because of the bomb to spread it further. Radiation sickness followed later.

A lot of the myth about the bomb too came from the fires. The scars that many survivors had were from burns, their children don't have inherited genetic flaws from the bomb (though it is an ongoing prejudice in a country that's very big on prejudice), etc.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Feynman, who worked on the Bomb, suffered psychological problems after the bomb was dropped

I don't doubt it, I would too...

If I was responsible for that, I think it would haunt me for the rest of my days...

Sometimes you have to do things that are terrible, that will break you as a person... and you have to do them anyway...

---

Ok, it is fiction, but it is a good example of the issue and it is what Star Trek was famous for before it went off the rails...

"In the Pale Moonlight"

With mounting losses in the Federation-Dominion war, and the specter of defeat, Captain Sisko enlists Garak's help to "persuade" the Romulans to join the Federation/Klingon alliance to win the war. Sisko unwittingly learns that to save the Federation, he may have to sell his soul and the values Starfleet stands for.

A few choice quotes:

"My father used to say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I laid the first stone right there. I'd committed myself. I'd pay any price, go to any lengths, because my cause was righteous. My... intentions were good. In the beginning, that seemed like enough."

"That was my first moment of real doubt, when I started to wonder if the whole thing was a mistake. So I went back to my office. And there was a new casualty list waiting for me. People are dying out there every day! Entire worlds are struggling for their freedom! And here I am still worrying about the finer points of morality! No, I had to keep my eye on the ball! Winning the war, stopping the bloodshed, those were the priorities! So I pushed on. And every time another doubt appeared before me, I just found another way to shove it aside."

"At oh-eight-hundred hours, station time... the Romulan Empire formally declared war against the Dominion. They've already struck fifteen bases along the Cardassian border. So, this is a huge victory for the good guys! This may even be the turning point of the entire war! There's even a "Welcome to the Fight" party tonight in the wardroom!... So... I lied. I cheated. I bribed men to cover up the crimes of other men. I am an accessory to murder. But most damning of all... I think I can live with it... And if I had to do it all over again... I would. Garak was right about one thing â" a guilty conscience is a small price to pay for the safety of the Alpha Quadrant. So I will learn to live with it...Because I can live with it...I can live with it. Computer â" erase that entire personal log."

---

What Ben Sisco did was "illegal, against the law, and wrong". But in all likelihood, there wouldn't have been a Federation left to debate it had he not.

That is a moral argument to be sure, which was the point of the show, to ask the question of the viewer, "are there times when the ends justify the means, when any price is acceptable to obtain the outcome desired?" Is the freedom and safety of a trillion people worth that?

You might say no, and that is fine, it is your right to believe and feel that way... but I think you'll always find someone who feels that the answer is yes, and because of that, we must and will always have nuclear weapons in this world.

And to be honest, I find that a little sad, because I would love nothing more than to move on from war and the pointless killing of our fellow humans... it is such a waste...

Re:It is what it is

[Darinbob]

There was a belief though that the US only had the resources for a single bomb. The US expected an instant surrender, but it took time for the realization of what happened to sink in as much of the damage was similar to that of fire bombing and direct damage from the blast was not as large as damage from the ensuing fires. Ie, it looked like a repeat of the Tokyo attacks in some ways, which definitely cemented the view of the US as evil aggressors for targeting civilians directly.

Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually appears they surrendered after the first one, and if they had both known about and believed what the bomb was capable of they probably would have surrendered before that.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you have not read nor have much knowledge concerning ww2. Prior to dropping the first bomb on hiroshima, the allies had begun a bombing campaign against the japanese home islands. In one night alone it was estimated that over 100,000 civilians were killed due to a single bombing raid. I can't remember how many raids in total there was but there were a lot. The japanese were going to allow the allies to continue to bomb and yes invade the home islands in hopes of getting a surrender treaty where by their current power structure would stay in place including the emperor. So the bombs did help reduce not only total number of soldiers that would have died. But also helped reduce the 100,000s of civilians that would have died. The only war crime was the foolishness of military power that was willing to let all those civilians die in return for letting them stay in some kind of power. In other words they didn't care what happened to the civilians, they were useful tools. It is possible that eventually the japanese might have surrender under the constant bombing but the code of bushido played a major role in how their soldiers fought. That is why it was estimated that over a million soldiers would have been hurt or killed during the invasion of the home islands.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't surrender after the first bombing. They did try to open a channel with the Soviets but it was an attempt to surrender under terms where by the current japanese power structure stayed in place which wouldn't have been allowed by the allies anyway.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender.

No, it didn't. Japan was close to surrender anyway. The government felt that the situation was hopeless and a negotiated surrender would be the best option. The military was still holding out, but even they knew that there was little chance of reaching a stalemate by that point. Moves were afoot to negotiate with the US over terms, and of course the US knew that because some members of the Japanese government were talking to them to see what kind of deal might be possible.

Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

The reason was simply that the US wanted to know the effects of atomic weapons on cities full of civilians, because it assumed that in the future other countries would also develop the bomb and might attack them with it. That's why they did two in quick succession, to test two different bomb designs. Again, if you disagree you have to justify the use of a second bomb only three days later, before the Japanese had time to really understand what had happened and make the political moves necessary to surrender.

Re:It is what it is

[Ihlosi]

What constitutes a war crime is determined by treaty and the customary laws of war.

You've heard about The Hague Invasion Act?

The US has prosecuted its own service members

In general, you have to commit some pretty barbaric atrocities above and beyond the normal scope of the term "war crime" to receive more than a slap on the wrist from your own country. The US is no exception.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan had enough time to think, to fortify the homeland against the invasion they knew was coming. The Emperor had no intention of surrender. Two bombs were necessary. Too bad we didn't have five or ten to also drop on Germany, that would be more humane than firebombing.

Re:It is what it is

[serviscope_minor]

As always the situation is never as simple as people like and hindsight is 20/20. The US was waging an incredibly bloody war against the Japanese and wanted it over. Fast, and while Japan was close to surrender, the military was still holding out, and that, after all is the important bit.They also had a new superweapon they wanted to test (though the practical effects were really no worse than the massed bomber raids). It was also clear that while the bomber raids were incredibly damaging, they didn't seem to induce surrender.

But, it's not just that.

They needed Japan to surrender RIGHT NOW, because their other allies, the Communists, were busy overrunning everything in their path, and the US government really did not want Japan to become a Communist sattelite state, so they needed immediate, unconditional surrender, so that it was done and dusted by the time the communist armies could arrive.

It was never as simple as just wanting tosee how good it was on civillian populations.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

Of course it is hard, because you weren't there, living through it at the time...

You're playing Monday morning quarterback, which is why the whole thing looks crazy to you 70 years later...

But if you bothered to learn your history you'd understand why it was used...

Re:It is what it is

[kyrsjo]

> The enemy can't retaliate if they lose, now can they?

In many cases, they can. This what kept poison gas from being used in WW2 - both sides had it (or could easily make it), but chose not to as it would break the "gentlemans agreement" which is the law of war, and encourage the other side to do the same.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

the firebombing of Dresden and other European cities and the nukes on Japan were truly barbaric acts, purposefully designed to kill large numbers of civilians, each of these events slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in a very short time.

Perhaps, but you weren't fighting in 1941... you didn't see and experience Germany on the rise, sweeping over most of Europe, seemingly unstoppable...

The West at that time was quite frightened of Germany and was willing to do whatever it took to stop them, including firebombing cities.

Even in 1944 when it appeared we were winning, there were small signs that Germany might have an edge and make a comeback... The V1 and V2, the ME-262, the ME-163, and other weapons that were way beyond anything we had.

It is so easy, in 2015, to judge what was done 70 year ago, but since you didn't live through it, you really have no idea what it was like... My Grandfather fought for Canada in WWII and he has shared many stories with me, and I've talked to other vets over the years who also served... their viewpoint is worth far more than your Monday Morning Quarterback take on it...

Re: It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

You can even be oblivious to what I think, but you cannot do anything about it...

You're quite right, there are plenty of people who believe in rainbows and unicorns in this world... I can't do anything about that either...

People say two bombs were necessary to stop the war... Really? How could Japan possibly surrender with just one bomb if they had no time to think and blam! ...there comes the second one.

That reply indicates that you actually don't know what you're talking about. You of course will dismiss me and claim that you do, but that doesn't make it so.

If you think this is just "dreaming", maybe you forgot your obligation to pass this onto the next generations. That sucks...

Yes, it sucks that you're judging actions taken 70 years ago with your limited viewpoint in 2015, when you weren't there and don't know what happened.

It is a shame that so many people like you exist in the world, humanity has little future when people like you learn nothing from history except what didn't happen other than what you imagine.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

In general, you have to commit some pretty barbaric atrocities above and beyond the normal scope of the term "war crime" to receive more than a slap on the wrist from your own country. The US is no exception.

Yep, this is true of just about every nation...

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Chemical weapons were used by Japan... Germany didn't use them for a simple reason... Hitler had been subject to a Mustard Gas attack in WWI and had been temporary blinded. So he knew the effects first hand and how much trouble they were.

He also knew how easy it was for your own chemical weapons to drift with the wind right back onto you.

With the speed of blitzkrieg, there really wasn't a need for them, Panzars could do the job more effectively.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?

Probably not after the first one...

But after Boston was turned to slag, then yes, probably so...

Re:It is what it is

[BadDreamer]

The Soviet Union routinely engaged in rape, burning and pillaging during WWII. They also had Unit 731 equivalents. And they were with the Allies. Thus, the answer is: plenty of them.

The Allied engaged in exactly the same sort of wholesale barbarism as the Axis did, and on about the same scale. The difference is, the Allied won. That is why they are today called "the civilized world" even though there was no appreciable difference in conduct at the time.

Re:It is what it is

[ShanghaiBill]

It took two nuclear weapons to convince Japan to surrender.

False. Japan had already offered to surrender before the bombs were dropped, using the Soviet Union as an intermediary, on basically the same terms that were eventually adopted.

What if WW2 had turned out differently, and Germany developed the bomb first? By your logic, the Nazis would have been perfectly justified to begin obliterating American cities, and killing millions of American civilians, since nothing else would have convinced America to surrender. So they would have had no choice, and been morally justified. Right?

Re:It is what it is

[EzInKy]

Perhaps, but I'm just happy that my father and the fathers of millions of others did not die because Japan was forced to surrender. Whether American, British, Korean, Chinese, or even Japanese...many, many lives were saved due to the "bomb".

Re:It is what it is

[Rei]

We're not talking about playing Monday Morning Quarterback. There's a ton of revisionist history that happened after the war trying to pretend that everyone was in agreement about using nuclear weapons on cities and that it would have prevented millions of deaths from a ground war in the home islands with Japan. But that's just not the reality. The US's military leaders themselves were split over the use of the bomb. Some were adamantly opposed to using it on cities - among them, they were split further into groups who wanted to use it only on enemy troops, and groups that wanted to only use it as a pre-arranged "this is what you've coming if you don't surrender" demonstration to back up the Potsdam declaration. Likewise, official military casualty estimates were all over the board - yes, they ranged upwards of a million or more, but also down to the tens of thousands. There were many who were convinced that Japan was just getting ready to surrender. Even among those who wanted to bomb Japanese cities there was sometimes expressed a fear that Japan was about to surrender, insomuch as they wanted to be able to get a final show of force in to put the US in a better negotiation position vs. the Soviets after the war.

After the war, the US launched the Strategic Bombing Survey to determine how effective the various tactics used in both theatres were at achieving their objectives - everything from attacks against oil infrastructure to the atomic bombs. It made use of vast numbers of interviews and the huge troves of documents captured after the war to be able to get a comprehensive view. The report indicated that the atomic bombs had no impact on the voting of Japan's war council - the division of votes between the hawks and doves remained exactly the same before and after the attacks. All that did change was that it pushed up the urgency in the emperor's schedule. Japan's war council had already agreed to surrender on June 26th, albeit with terms (although half of the council was already willing to accept unconditional surrender). The emperor prepared a mission involving his son to go out with instructions from the council to negotiate a conditional surrender, but was secretly instructed to accept unconditional surrender if it was the only option available. The mission was pushed back due to the Potsdam conference, which ultimately issued the Potsdam declaration on July 26. The emperor twice broke his customary silence with the War Council during this period, once before and once after the bombings, speaking in favor of accepting the Potsdam terms; it was becoming increasingly hard for the War Council to say no. It's important to remember what Japan had already lived through - the main reason for example that an atomic bomb wasn't used on Tokyo was because Tokyo was already a steaming mass of rubble (the bombing report actually refers to the possibility of a bomb being dropped "on the remains of Tokyo"). The bombing survey concluded, "It is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

It's understandable that Americans would want to whitewash this history away, to feel that they had "no choice" but to willingly kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children by design. And the only way to argue that would be to argue that they saved far more people that they killed, and that everyone was in agreement that this brutality would be necessary. But this is unfortunately not reality. US leadership was highly, and often bitterly divided on the issue, and the US's own postwar study concluded that it was not necessary.

A curious sidenote raises a big question mark in the history books on how much Truman actually knew what he was signing onto. He repeatedly made statements to the effect of, and wrote in his diary, that while he felt the US should

Re:It is what it is

[tehcyder]

No, there are most definitely rules in war. For example, the US (sort of) punished the perpetrators of the My Lai massacre, and they were US soldiers.

There is a difference between killing enemy combatants and killing civilians.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

The official death toll from the atomic bombings, including those who died afterwards due to fallout, disease and other related things is just shy of 300,000.

The comparison with a full scale invasion of Japan is a false dichotomy.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a crime today but it wasn't in 1945. And even today, who would suggest that killing 80,000 civilians in one go in order to save a million over the next 3 months is criminal?

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

If the war had continued a mere 3 weeks longer, more people would have been killed than were killed by both bombs combined. Most of them would have been civilians and most of them living under Japanese imperial rule. Don't be such a fucking knob-jockey about it.

Re:It is what it is

[Barsteward]

"There are really no rules in war" - there are "The Hague laws and Geneva Conventions are some of the most widely applied of these international agreements."

Killing civilians in a conflict is abominable whether it be the carpet (or atomic) bombing of cities (Nagasaki, London, Dresden, etc) or herding people into concentration camps and gassing them.

Sure, the winners get a "pass" on their war crime atrocities as they write the history books but it does not make it right or something worth boasting about. As time passes, the history of events gets updated and corrected and the next generation reap the guilt of their forefathers actions.

Re:It is what it is

[DNS-and-BIND]

The Japanese were NOT close to surrender. You know who was close to surrender? The same Emperor who allowed his troops to run wild, again and again, without restraining them. The surrender depended on HIM making a stand, after he had failed and failed again to do so. Even after the Japanese military itself had murdered leader after leader who took any kind of conciliatory position. It's bizarre how these people just show up with one thought: AMERIKKKA BAD and will not be dissuaded from this conclusion. Suddenly everyone's an expert historian. Funny these historians never seem to run across any contrary facts.

As late as surrender time-even after the A-bombs had been dropped-a staff lieutenant colonel, related to the War Minister himself, was fervently convinced that even if the whole Japanese race were all but wiped out, its determination to preserve the National Polity would be forever recorded in the annals of man; whereas a people who sacrificed their will upon the altar of physical existence could never deserve resurrection. It would be useless for the people to survive the war, anyhow, if the structure of the State itself were destroyed. It was better to die than to seek ignominious "safety".

At a climactic last Imperial Conference, War Minister Anami was still talking about going on with the war, of meting out a terrible blow to the enemy and achieving a good opportunity to end the war. Japan must press forward courageously, seeking Life in Death: certain victory was not assured, but neither was utter defeat. The terrain was working in favor of the defenders, and so was the inflexible national unity. But just in case a massive blow against the enemy proved not possible, it seemed appropriate for the name of Nippon to be inscribed forever in history by the annihilation of her 100 million loyal subjects, etc., etc. And tears welled into the eyes of the earnest War Minister.

When the Emperor, by a thrilling act of personal courage, opted for peace-and surrender-he too was weeping. He reminded his stunned auditors that ever since the outbreak of the war there had been frequent cases when Army and Navy actions differed from plans. Now the armed forces were preparing for decisive battle in the homeland and were claiming that the prospects of victory were satisfactory.

He was profoundly troubled, continued the Emperor. What would happen if Japan plunged into decisive battle under such circumstances? The entire race would be obliterated, and this would be a betrayal of the trust of ancestors and the duty toward posterity, lest Japan never again rise. Continuation of the war, then, could only serve to cripple Japan, extinguish civilization, and bring misfortune to mankind.

The Japanese Emperor's decision to end the war, under enormous external and internal pressure, obviated the American landings and the hemorrhage that was bound to occur soon on the beaches of Miyazaki, Satsuma, and Ariake. Not only would five US ground divisions, etc., be saved from the destruction at sea which the Japanese resolutely promised them, but untold thousands of Japanese would not die either-such as squadrons of kamikaze pilots and sailors with one way tickets to the shrine of heroes at Yasukuni; or the women and children clutching pitiful staves and bamboo spears.
-- Dr. Alan C. Coox, "Olympic vs. Ketsu-Go", Marine Corps Gazette, August 1965, Vol. 49, No. 8.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

We're not talking about playing Monday Morning Quarterback. There's a ton of revisionist history that happened after the war trying to pretend that everyone was in agreement about using nuclear weapons on cities and that it would have prevented millions of deaths from a ground war in the home islands with Japan.

How about you shut the fuck up right now and pick up a Japanese history book if you'd like to see white washing. You'll find no references of Japan being the aggressor or the lovely Unit 731 vivisecting live people.

In the words of my great uncle, a World War II vet who machine gunned Japanese boarders out of the water while he was a Marine, the only thing he and most of his people regretted is that they only had two bombs and not ten. Rei, I know you're a pussy, but seriously, sit back and put yourself in the time of a life or death war.

Re:It is what it is

[drinkypoo]

The United States is very good at estimating military casualties. It's necessary when war is waged on a huge scale, and good numbers are needed if the war effort is to be as efficient as possible.

Yeah, right up until it's time to admit how many people we killed when we invade someplace, like the middle east. Then suddenly we have no idea what the casualty numbers are.

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.

Bullshit. Responsibility is everywhere. Too bad our society doesn't expect people to actually take it.

Re:It is what it is

[drinkypoo]

In general, you have to commit some pretty barbaric atrocities above and beyond the normal scope of the term "war crime" to receive more than a slap on the wrist from your own country.

They throw a few soldiers to the dogs every year to make it look like they're doing something about rape or whatever, so really, you have to either go above and beyond the call of war crimes or just win the loser lottery.

Re:It is what it is

[Orgasmatron]

Double False. Japan was trying very hard to avoid having to surrender.

http://rerum-novarum.blogspot....

With regards to unconditional surrender (I have been informed of your 18 July message*), we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatsoever. Even if the war drags on and it becomes clear it will take much more bloodshed, the entire country as one man will pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Imperial Will so long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender...

Togo concluded by saying that he had read a long message of 20 July from Sato, but that the decision he was communicating had been made by the Cabinet and that Sato should proceed accordingly.

Re:It is what it is

[ScentCone]

By your logic, the Nazis would have been perfectly justified to begin obliterating American cities

What? How would they have been justified? They were the aggressors, just like Japan. We were justified in taking actions to STOP the aggression of those two countries. Careful, your moral relativism is showing. How do you not walk in front of traffic with your moral compass twirling around like that?

Re:It is what it is

[ScentCone]

The comparison with a full scale invasion of Japan is a false dichotomy.

Why, because you'd like to pretend that the countless examples of Japan's willingness to put its own people through the meat grinder of conventional war, including shrugging off the fiery destruction of Tokyo, wasn't real? Are you so anxious to lazily do your whole time-traveling armchair conflict resolution that your urge to re-imagine the actual history of the conflict and Japan's demonstrated behavior is strong enough to make you look past how ridiculous you sound? Apparently.

Re:It is what it is

[jabuzz]

Japan surrendered unconditionally. It was the only offer on the table. Before their unconditional surrender they where offering a *CONDITIONAL* surrender.

Given the appalling history of conditional surrenders in the 20th century with aggressor nations there was no way in hell the allies where going to accept a conditional surrender again.

The defeated nation needed to know they where utterly defeated so they never tried it again.

Re:It is what it is

[jafiwam]

That isn't so much sarcasm as it is simply wrong. What constitutes a war crime is determined by treaty and the customary laws of war. Threat of retaliation is a recognized means of encouraging compliance with the law of war by the enemy. The US has prosecuted its own service members for war crimes as well as war criminals from among the enemy.

Well then, you can cite the particular section, paragraph, and line where those treaties were broken. Right?

Make sure you use only ones that the US had already signed by 1945.

Re:It is what it is

[Nidi62]

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either

Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime. Curtis LeMay was man enough to recognise that strategic bombing, that is the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets to break the will of the enemy was a war crime. And he would have ended as a criminal had he not been on the victorious side. History and law is written by the victors always. And many times this skews the moral analysis of the events.

Killing those 80,000 civilians saved the lives of millions more civilians, not to mention millions of soldiers. Even ignoring the fact that the Japanese were training civilians to repel invaders with spears (and given the Japanese military's fanatical adherence to ineffective tactics, they would literally have had thousands of people lining the shores with spears waiting to meet the incoming landing craft), the experience of the Saipan and Okinawa landings shows that many more civilians would have been compelled or willingly committed suicide. Also, as the war progressed and Japan's industrial capabilities were irreparably destroyed, more and more war production was being done at home. You had civilians sewing uniforms, making weapons and munitions, and even smelting ore in their backyards. War production was a valid target in WWII, thereby making these civilians valid targets as well.

If 1 life is just as equal as another life, then the roughly 200000 killed by the 2 bombs is vastly overshadowed by the millions more that didn't die in the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. There is a very real possibility that, had those bombs not been dropped and the war continued to its ultimate conclusion, there would be no Japan today as the military leadership was perfectly willing to drag the whole country down with them in defeat. Remember, even after the bombs were dropped a faction in the military leadership attempted to stage a coup to prevent the Emperor from surrendering. The bombs were horrible things, but the only other option was worse by several orders of magnitude. Literally millions of people (not just American, but Japanese, Russian, British, etc) are alive today because of those bombs.

Re:It is what it is

[dywolf]

It's not completely certain that the estimates were valid, let alone that an invasion would be required.
I say this as the grandson of the man who would have been leading the first platoon to hit the beaches of Japan (and therefore nearly guaranteed to die, erasing my own existence).

most of the major cities of japan had already been reduced to rubble. its not covered nearly as well, but we did to japan the same thing we did to Germany with our strategic bombing. only we did more of it; particularly the use of incendiaries and firebombing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were selected at least partly because they were two of the few remaining largely untouched ('virgin') cities, and the powers that be wanted a clear picture of just how destructive the bombs could be. this decision was made over the opinion of others who though it should be demonstrated offshore or in the mountains, or similar largely uninhabited yet visible area to demonstrate the power to the Japanese people.

internal communications of Japans leadership indicate they were close to surrender already, having been reduced to just their home territory, and feared Russia's joining the war more than anything, due to the long enmity between their nations (make no mistake, any Russian occupation of Japan likely would have been a nightmare for the Japanese people).

we never really will know the answer to the what ifs, because we ultimately did drop them on cities, and we killed hundreds of thousands in a single stroke, and more over the years thanks to the lingering effects.

strategic bombing was intended to destroy industry, but with the tech at the time precision accuracy wasn't possible, so everyone knew it was inevitable that civilians would be harmed, but largely that wasn't the end goal of strategic bombing. Terror bombing on the hand did have that as the goal, and attacks such as Dresden and the repeated firebombing of Japan were terror bombings, even if not admitted to as such.

and the nukes made no pretense (though Truman tried for a little bit) at being 'strategic'.
make no mistake, they were terror bombings intentionally carried out against a civilian noncombatant populace.
they were war crimes in every sense of the word.

Re:It is what it is

[dywolf]

Actually not true at all.

The invasion, if it went off, was planned for November.

Re:It is what it is

[jafiwam]

Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

If you only have one bomb, and you don't know if it's going to work the way you think it will, you don't put it in front of some leaders who are nigh-insane from a vastly different culture, and rely on logic and psychology to do your work for you.

The idea of a demonstration was a stupid one then, and is a stupid idea now.

To win a war, you have to remove the ability and will of the enemy to fight. The will of THIS enemy was creating kamikaze pilots, training civilians to fight to the death and sword wielding rushes into machine gun fire. A bomb in a harbor to show it to the crazies hoping they capitulate is NOT a good bet in light of an enemy with that kind of will.

Re:It is what it is

[dywolf]

its safe to say quite a bit of additional information has come to light since 1965.
you should probably take the time to learn it.

Re:It is what it is

[Nidi62]

Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

Yes we can. The attempted coup by members of the military after it became known that the Emperor was contemplating surrender after the bombs were dropped shows that there were those perfectly willing to continue fighting even though there was no hope of defeat. The fact that you had Japanese soldiers walking out of jungles 10, 20, 40 years after the war; the countless islands where, out of 15000-20000 defenders you had survivors numbering less than 100; when Japanese soldiers would clutch primed grenades to head or chest sitting next to a loaded rifle or placing the muzzle of their rifle into their mouths at the first sight of a US Marine rather than risk a dishonorable surrender gives argument to the fact that plenty of Japanese would have willingly continued to fight, with many more following them along the path to death and destruction.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

no, we just experimented on our own soldiers and cilivians, largely blacks, instead.

Re:It is what it is

[jafiwam]

We're not talking about playing Monday Morning Quarterback. There's a ton of revisionist history that happened after the war trying to pretend that everyone was in agreement about using nuclear weapons on cities and that it would have prevented millions of deaths from a ground war in the home islands with Japan.

How about you shut the fuck up right now and pick up a Japanese history book if you'd like to see white washing. You'll find no references of Japan being the aggressor or the lovely Unit 731 vivisecting live people.

In the words of my great uncle, a World War II vet who machine gunned Japanese boarders out of the water while he was a Marine, the only thing he and most of his people regretted is that they only had two bombs and not ten. Rei, I know you're a pussy, but seriously, sit back and put yourself in the time of a life or death war.

Yup.

The US should admit maybe the bombs weren't the best option when all of Japan admits what they did. ALL of it. I want pictures of the jap soldier holding his rifle aloft with the chinese baby impaled on the bayonet on the front page of every newspaper and website for a year. When that's done, we move on to other stuff.

Re:It is what it is

[BadDreamer]

This all blows matters completely out of proportion. Today we're scared numb by nukes. Back then all this wringing of hands and pondering did not occur, because an atomic bomb to the governments of WWII was nothing but a bigger bomb.

And "hide the slaughter" of fewer people than the first bombing run on Tokyo killed? What on earth for? They were at war, and strategic bombing of civilians was considered a viable strategy. The US had already killed over 300 thousand Japanese civilians in the summer bombings. What's there to hide?

Re:It is what it is

[nagora]

Lies and propaganda. The Japanese had been trying to surrender for weeks before the bomb; the supposed sticking point being that they wanted to keep the emperor, which of course they did in the end. There was never any chance of American casualties because there was never any chance of a violent invasion being needed. People like you make me sick, frankly. You're a disgrace to the human race and proof that even 4 million years of evolving a massive brain doesn't give some people the will power to use it instead of simply accepting all the crap that self-serving warcrats churn out to make sure that no one ever drags them in front of a court for the deliberate mass murder of civilians just to make apolitical point. In short: go fuck yourself, scumbag.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

[Citation Needed]

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Analysis is spot on. Racism also played a part.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Baby needs a lollipop. Aggressors. Oh god. That was funny.

Re:It is what it is

[WhatHump]

Of course we can never know for sure if Japan would have surrendered without the bombs, but that in itself is a false dichotomy. A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

How about vengeance, for Pearl Harbor (2,400 dead), Okinawa (14,000 dead), Iwo Jima (6,800 dead), etc?

It was war. Three years of watching young men come home in coffins will harden anyone's soul.

Re:It is what it is

[ScentCone]

Aggressors. Oh god. That was funny.

You're right. Germany's rolling over Poland, or Japan's rape-fest through Asia - that was just friendly foreign relations banter. You're so wise!

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

The problem being that if the full extent of Japan's crimes in Asia before and during the war were known, people would be Sking why ten bombs weren't dropped.

So awful was Japan's reign over parts of East Asia that seventy years later, a Japanese political leader visiting Yasukuni Shrine can still cause anger and dismay in China and the Koreas.

Re:It is what it is

[patches]

Perhaps, but we still sentenced people to prison for doing the exact same thing that we did.

Karl DÃnitz was sent to prison for sinking allied ships without warning, yet even at his trial, Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, stated the U.S. Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the U.S. entered the war.

Sinking neutral ships without warning. Big difference. Plus there were all the other charges against him.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

After the first bomb was dropped the Emperor was authorized to officially ask for terms for a surrender. The US didn't even wait long enough for the offer to be made before dropping the second bomb, probably because it realized that it might miss its chance to do a second test.

What you describe is a revision of history mixed with propaganda.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

They had two bombs, and they knew that they would work because they had been tested in the US already. The only purpose for dropping them on cities was to observe what would happen to a civilian population, which is why two targets that were mostly non-military and thus had not already suffered much conventional bomb damage were selected.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Double False. Japan was trying very hard to avoid having to surrender.

Triple False then, because your quote reflects unconditional surrender, not surrender.

The concept and practice of a conditioned surrender is well known, just ask General Grant with General Lee. Ask Washington with Cornwallis. Ask any number of others.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The civilians in Japan were actively providing direct support to the Japanese war effort. This makes them a legitimate target. Those same 'civilians' were also training with weapons, including spears, to resist the planned invasion. Again, this makes them soldiers and legitimate targets.

From the purely moral sense, it would have been equally evil to salve your own conscience by refusing to use atomic weapons when the Japanese were killing civilians elsewhere at the rate of 400,000 a month - over 10,000 each day. If the bombs shaved even just a week off the time until the Japanese surrender, it was a good decision.

The concept of "Total War" has been discussed widely, and by people far more intelligent than you, for decades. It is not nice, and it is not pleasant. But neither is any form of war.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States announced to all parties, in all nations, that the US would be attacking shipping in the Pacific. Ships were warned beforehand that sailing into that area made them a target.

That's all it takes.
If Germany had made a similar announcement before the U-boats started sinking neutral-flagged ships in the Atlantic, it wouldn't have been a war crime.

It's almost as if there were centuries of tradition and law behind the idea of the laws of war, and that people were following them...

Re:It is what it is

[TWX]

If the repeated firebombing of Tokyo that resulted in probably 100,000 dead didn't prompt the Japanese leadership to sue for peace, the US war planners couldn't have expected what was perceived as just a bigger bomb to have caused them to do so.

Frankly, we do not know if the Japanese would have surrendered after the first bomb. We do know that two horribly devastating bombs that close together convinced them to surrender unconditionally.

Re:It is what it is

[ultranova]

The United States had a million Purple Hearts manufactured to award to the soldiers expected to be killed or wounded in action in the invasion of Japan.

[...]

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either.

So does this mean we should stop vilifying Al-Qaeda which, after all, is using the only strategy which has any chance of success? And ISIS has little to offer new recruits besides sex slaves and free reign for the darkness inside, so I guess that's okay too.

Or does expediency only justify your tribe's actions? Why do you think that'll end any better for you than it did for Japan or Germany?

Of course this is all ignoring the fact that Japan was beaten. The only things in question were the timetable and terms of its surrender. US also had other tools besides invasion and city-nuking at its disposal, such as a blockade or demonstrating the bomb on an uninhabited target. Frankly, the whole thing smells of having a billion-dollar project take on a life of its own ("we've spent a billion taxpayer dollars on this, we have to use it on something!") coupled with racism further fed by wartime propaganda ("ain't a crime to burn them yellow rats!").

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

You count people how died from causes like disease and starvation, even though the bomb didn't cause them. But...

Occupied China was losing about 400,000 civilians a month due to the Japanese. Why do you ignore those civilians?
The US was losing about 20,000 soldiers a month just approaching Japan and setting up the blockade. Why do you ignore those people?
A full blockade of Japan, which imported a great deal of food, in conjunction with the destruction of cargo transit capabilities would have resulted in widespread famine and death - expected to have totaled between 2-10 million people in the first year. Why do you ignore those people?

This wasn't a choice between two clear events with precursors or consequences - this was just one small part of a war that spanned the world. In other words, it's a lot more complicated than your blatant oversimplification.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of dropping a second bomb so soon could simply have been to indicate that these bombs were going to be the new normal. I had heard that the threat of a third bomb drop was discussed prior to surrender. This was an empty boast, as no third bomb had been created yet at that point, but there was no reason to let the enemy know that. This threat only works if dropping these bombs seems like something you can do at a whim, which is a "good" reason to drop two so close together.

I can't say that I am terribly proud to be a member of the only nation to use nuclear weapons offensively, and especially not proud that we used them on civilian targets, but I didn't live through the war. My grandfather did, I wish now I had asked him what he felt about using them, but it is too late for that now.

Re:It is what it is

[richard.cs]

Double False. Japan was trying very hard to avoid having to surrender.

They were trying to avoid unconditional surrender, i.e. they wanted to guarantee the survival of the emperor*, even if without power. They eventually surrendered when they were allowed this. The main things that caused Japan to surrender when they did were 1) The USA finally backing down on "unconditional" and 2) the threat of imminent Soviet invasion. That Soviet threat was the cause of 1) - the USA didn't want Japan to be occupied by the USSR.

If you read the minutes of the Japanese meetings when surrender was debated they atom bomb is barely mentioned, the vast Soviet army and the fate of the emperor dominated those discussions. The atomic bombs were no more destructive than the incendiary raids that had already caused Dresden-type firestorms in many Japanese cities.

*Westerners struggle to understand this, in a country where the emperor is worshipped as a living deity his execution for war crimes would have been seen less like hanging Harry Trueman and more like the crucifixion of Christ.

Re:It is what it is

[cyberchondriac]

If this were the case, then every country involved in WWII were also guilty of war crimes, not just the evil old USA (and Nazi Germany).
Even a most cursory examination of WWI history will quickly reveal that the entire cities of Coventry and Dresden were obliterated via carpet bombing. What does it matter if it took one bomb, or several hours of bombing with hundreds of bombs? The net result is the same. Bombing cities and killing civilians was the de rigueur of war back then, and even Japan was far from absolved, just look up the Nanking massacre. Some estimates have that death toll at higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Some Japanese wanted to surrender conditionally. Some were determined not to surrender, including people in top government positions who would have to agree. War Minister Anami, in particular, would have to agree. They sent the Soviets a message asking them to serve as go-betweens, but never officially determined on terms to offer. There was at least one attempt on the part of a Japanese official, not representing his government, to negotiate. There were some Japanese who thought the situation was dire enough to accept the near-unconditional surrender the Allies offered, but most on the peace side wanted a peace that kept the Japanese government in power.

We can never know under what conditions other than the historical Japan would have surrendered. In historical fact, they had been utterly defeated navally, the Soviets had overrun Manchuria, the Japanese economy had been dealt various blows (including the cutoff of Japanese industrial areas from the northern coal fields), and was collapsing, the US had conducted an immensely destructive fire-bombing campaign, and dropped two nukes after warning the Japanese of an upcoming rain of destruction. At this point, the peace side and the Emperor, by a not entirely constitutional maneuver, got the Japanese government to more or less agree. Nobody knew what Anami was going to do (and since he committed ritual suicide that night without explaining himself, nobody's ever going to know what he would have done otherwise), and there was an attempted coup that included an attack on the Imperial palace to stop the surrender. Under those circumstances, I'm really dubious over what would have made the Japanese surrender. Given that, I simply don't believe anybody who says Truman should have known the Japanese would surrender if X.

The Japanese government knew perfectly well what happened at Hiroshima. Anami apparently didn't care. After the Nagasaki bombing, it didn't take the Japanese all that long to get a surrender going.

The purpose was to make the Japanese surrender, by hitting them with everything we could. In fact, it worked.

Re:It is what it is

[maestroX]

The United States is very good at estimating military casualties.
...
The United States had a million Purple Hearts manufactured to award to the soldiers expected to be killed or wounded in action in the invasion of Japan.
They're still using that stock today

Even now, it would cost nothing to say 'sorry' for gratuitous sadism. --Norman Stone

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

I don't know if another three weeks would have raised the civilian death count that much, but a couple of months would certainly have done it.

I get really sick at the people who care about the Japanese civilians and not the Chinese, Indochinese, Malayan, and Indonesian ones, who died in very large numbers under Japanese occupation. Rescuing them ASAP was a good reason to nuke Japanese cities.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Only one bomb had been tested, and just because one implosion bomb carefully hand-built by top people exploded well (the estimates of the yield before Trinity varied wildly) didn't mean the next would.

Hiroshima contained the headquarters for the Army charged with the defense of the southern Home Island. It was a legitimate military target. (Under international law, it was the Japanese responsibility to remove military targets from civilian areas, not US responsibility to not bomb anywhere there were civilians.)

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> humanity has little future when people like you learn nothing from history except what didn't happen other than what you imagine.

I find your lack of faith disturbing...

You'll never work toward anything positive if you keep such a somber view. We cannot afford being depressive.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Doenitz was not found guilty for unrestricted submarine warfare. His legal counsel sent questions to Nimitz, who responded that he considered such warfare within the laws of war. Doenitz was found guilty of other things, which I believe he was guilty of. (I think his early war superior Raeder got a bum rap, but not Doenitz.)

Re:It is what it is

[TWX]

The fate of the Japanese was determined in-part by a single family in Hawaii that aided a crash-landed Japanese pilot during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yoshio Harada and his wife Irene, both first-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry, provided direct assistance to the pilot despite having lived among the native Hawaiians for several years. That treachery provided the excuse needed by the federal government to round-up and hold Americans of Japanese ancestry for the duration of the war.

It's extremely rare to be able to point to one incident with literally a handful of otherwise-average people as a turning-point in the history of the human race, but those incidents in December 1941 on an island with a hundred residents in a remote part of the world sure had an effect.

Frankly it doesn't matter if the Japanese were trying to surrender. Surrender is a negotiation process, a transaction. After the way Allied troops were treated in the surrender of the Philippines, the United States and its allies were morally free to decline any surrender offer by the Japanese that didn't meet their demands. Until terms are offered and accepted it's not a surrender. Doesn't matter how hard they tried.

I find it very funny that you attack someone that attempts to understand history beyond the high-school textbook, and that you attribute traits to me that must come from some sad, psychotic little part of your head. I take no pride or shame in what my country has done in historical wars, I was not there. I do, however, like to look at what factors contributed to what decisions, especially the missteps along the way that changed the outcome, and the possible or likely ramifications of different decisions. That you are unable to be dispassionate about something that happened long before you were born and that most people have managed to move beyond says a lot more about you than it does about me.

Re:It is what it is

[schnell]

The military was still holding out, but even they knew that there was little chance of reaching a stalemate by that point.

Demonstrably untrue. While you are correct that the civilian members of the Japanese government had realized that the game was up, the military (which was dominated by nationalist hard-liners and junior officers besotted with banzai spirit) continued to actually welcome the idea of a US invasion. They believed the exact same thing they had believed before which made the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa so bloody: their best option was to make any US gains so expensive in blood and treasure that a negotiated settlement would be made that would allow them to retain their conquered possessions in Manchukuo and elsewhere. The military was not giving up anytime soon, and in fact some elements led a coup when they heard the Emperor had sanctioned surrender to prevent his imperial rescript from being broadcast. Read up on Ronald Spector's The Eagle Against the Sun or Max Hastings's Retribution to learn more.

A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.

I see this a lot, but it is not hard to answer this question. The bomb target selection committee - which included Dr. Oppenheimer - considered this idea but specifically rejected it because:

1. There was no way of guaranteeing that the Japanese government and military would believe that it was what it claimed to be. So there's a huge flash and a mushroom cloud over Tokyo Bay or Mt. Fuji. But a nondestructive test might very well lead the Japanese to believe that the bomb was less powerful than it really was, or to not understand its impact.
2. If the bomb failed or fizzled - which was certainly not impossible - it would in fact embolden the Japanese
3. Time was a factor. Roosevelt had secured a promise several months earlier from the Russians to get them to enter the war, back when it looked like we really needed their help. Now, though, they were getting ready to enter the war on their own terms and in the way that best suited them (i.e. striking first at territories they wanted to conquer and control), and if Japan didn't surrender quickly it might not be until the Soviets had occupied all of China in the process. Had the Soviet invasion been avoided by a quick, bomb-induced surrender then North Korea would not exist and there is a chance that Mao would never have succeeded against Chiang Kai-Shek...

There's a great deal of factual reporting about the thoughts and motivations of the bomb targeting group in the above two books as well as Richard Rhodes's Pulitzer-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Japan used chemical weapons against the Chinese, who had no means of retaliation. I don't remember any use against Western forces.

There were other reasons why Germany didn't use chemical weapons. The Western Allies had large stocks of mustard gas, and lesser stocks of nonpersistent agents. Had the Germans started it, the Allies could have used mustard gas in strategic bombing campaigns, and that would have been far more effective against industry. Moreover, the German army largely relied on horses for mobility. You can put a soldier in protective gear and the soldier will still be somewhat effective. You can put a horse in protective gear, but you're not going to get any work out of the horse. (There were gas masks for horses. I don't know how many were made.)

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

FWIW, the Japanese and Germans were practicing unrestricted civilian bombing before the Allies started (not much before, in the case of Germany). They just weren't nearly as good at it.

Re:It is what it is

[maestroX]

It is so easy, in 2015, to judge what was done 70 year ago, but since you didn't live through it, you really have no idea what it was like... My Grandfather fought for Canada in WWII and he has shared many stories with me, and I've talked to other vets over the years who also served... their viewpoint is worth far more than your Monday Morning Quarterback take on it...

It is impossible to judge people after talking to vets on either side, you think the common soldier had the option of clicking Axis or Allies and fight their favorite nemesis?
No doubt either one would have given or settled for anything to stop death and destruction.

Re:It is what it is

[olau]

The problem being that if the full extent of Japan's crimes in Asia before and during the war were known, people would be Sking why ten bombs weren't dropped.

So you are saying that the civilians, men, women and children, who died deserved it?

I think the same kind of reasoning is used in some parts of the world to conclude that the victims of 9/11 deserved what happened to them.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Geniuses are not immune to psychological problems. There's a lot of evidence that they're more prone to them. In any case, something is not wrong just because some people feel bad about it.

Re:It is what it is

[painandgreed]

Flip things around. If the Germans had gotten the bomb first and dropped one over the top of New York City would the US have surrendered?

Probably not after the first one...

But after Boston was turned to slag, then yes, probably so...

Even then, I think it would be greatly dependant on the USA's ability to defend themselves. The Japanese were had no navy to speak of, were having trouble feeding their own people who were starving, and everybody saw immediate invasion by troops. A USA, at the height of it's industrial and military might, hit by a single nuke on NYC and even a second on Boston, would probably fight as such attacks, even if with an atomic bomb, probably would have been a hail mary attempt about as effective as the Battle of the Bulge. A nuke on the D-Day landing might have held us off longer, however, by that time the USSR were near unstopable unless they managed to get lucky in a nuke on Moscow and took out Stalin. If talking about a strong Germany able to bomb the US mainland in a position of strength, then you're talking about some alternate reality where anything could be set up. An early nuclear bomb topping off the Blitz, might have pushed the UK to neutrality which is what Germany wanted. Then they would have used them on the USSR.

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

Welcome to Total War, which was largely invented by General Sherman in his March to the Sea, so everyone had lots of time to consider the costs of such a war. Japan spent the 1930s occupying large tracts of China, Korea and Southeast Asia. It enslaved populations, committed horrific atrocities, and then, made common cause with the Axis Powers, and then bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging the still neutral United States into the war and signing its death warrant.

Did Japanese civilians deserve the bombing campaigns and the deaths by the two atomic bombs? In one sense, no. They were civilians, and not combatants. In other another sense, yes, because their government pursued and imperialistic and expansionist policy that harmed millions, and ultimately dragged the most economically powerful nation in the world into a war that Japan really had no hope of winning.

In Total War, there are no such things as civilians. As Churchill pointed out in his History of WWII, in Total War, every aspect of a nation; its economy, its government, its population, become weapons. The entire nation is mobilized in one way or another, and thus all targets become legitimate targets.

It's horrible, it's incredibly unfair, it inevitably leads to devastation, massive casualties and is utterly immoral. The nuclear weapon didn't create Total War, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrated that, from August 1945 forward, the consequences of Total War would be far far worse.

So the real lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not to fight Total Wars at all, and, so far as I'm concerned, Fat Man and Little Boy paid the investment in them in spades by making future wide scale general wars largely unthinkable. I cannot imagine the number of casualties that would have come out of the WWIII campaign that was so briefly considered by military strategists in the West and in the USSR against each other. Such a war, fought with the conventional weapons of the day, would have made the Japanese casualties seem like a walk in the park.

The Empire of Japan under the likes of Tojo was evil, its utter destruction and the rebuilding of Japan as a peaceable and democratic state was good, and whether anyone likes it or not, that was only going to come with an unconditional surrender, something not even the Hiroshima bomb produced. Remember, it took two of them to finally convince the Emperor that the war was not only unwinnable, but would lead to the destruction of much of Japan if he allowed his ministers and his armed forces to continue this suicidal campaign of fighting to the death.

Re:It is what it is

[painandgreed]

The Japanese were NOT close to surrender.

From what I have read the Japanese, including the military, were trying to "surrender", however, their idea of surrender was to withdraw back to 1938 borders and pretending that WW2 never happened.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Sinking neutral ships without warning. Big difference. Plus there were all the other charges against him.

1. When those neutral ships were taking supplies to the British, are they really neutral? Even the USA, when declaring they were "neutral", were escorting British merchant ships half way across the Atlantic. Germany protested and the USA ignored them.

2. The other charges? You mean, like helping Hitler plan the war? What the heck is an ADMIRAL supposed to do??? That is his JOB!

Lets be honest, the charges against him were absurd, over 100 Allied senior people came to his defense, it was absurd. He didn't deserve to go to prison, that was a crime.

Re:It is what it is

[BadDreamer]

Imagine if Daesh manages to get hold of a nukes. One goes off in New York. Three days later another turns Boston to slag. The day after, downtown LA is the center of a dirty nuke.

Do then you see Obama handing the US government over to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Is that the response you expect from the US government in the face of such hardship?

Is that the response you'd expect from the Japanese war cabinet, when they had ignored that you killed 300000 civilians while you promised not to stop, and you just piled up 40000 more?

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

There was no time for "sinking in". The Japanese government knew that the Allies would accept only unconditional surrender, but they thought they could play for time. Even after the second atomic bomb, there were high ranking elements in the Japanese military who wanted to pursue a suicidal campaign to the death, and attempted to seize the Emperor in an attempted coup before he could formalize the unconditional surrender.

I will repeat, it took to atomic bombs to force Japan to utterly capitulate.

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

I doubt there were many people in China, Korea or Southeast Asia who cried a lot of tears over the deaths from the US bombing campaign and the two atomic bomb drops.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Doenitz was found guilty of other things, which I believe he was guilty of.

The irony is that if Hitler had provided for the U-Boat force that he had asked for at the start of the war, the outcome might have been quite different.

Winston Churchill once wrote that, '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. In saying this, he correctly identified the importance of the threat posed during World War Two by German submarines (the 'Unterseeboot') to the Atlantic lifeline. This lifeline was Britain's 'centre of gravity' - the loss of which would probably have led to wholesale defeat in the war.

Karl had wanted 300 U-Boats, and had he started the war with them, Great Britain would likely not have survived. As it was, Germany came very close on two occasions to cutting the lifeline and forcing their surrender.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/w...

Worth reading, even the British admit that the Americans were declaring neutrality, while behaving anything but... However since we won the war, it doesn't matter. Had we lost, Germany likely would have come after us for that the same way we came after them.

So as in all things, the rules, laws, and history is written by the victor, but in this case, we actually know the real history, if we bother to look.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

Japan used chemical weapons against the Chinese, who had no means of retaliation. I don't remember any use against Western forces.

Well that rather makes my point for why we are not, and should not give up our nuclear weapons.

Who is going to use them against us when we have them? If we don't, then they might.

Of course, this also explains why North Korea and Iran want them. :)

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

It would have been like Stalingrad, from everything known at the time and what we've found out since. All Japanese who could possibly make a difference on the battlefield were being armed and trained, and that includes young schoolgirls. The Japanese Army considered this to be when their attempts to make this too expensive for the US to continue would work (always overoptimistic). All available boats and airplanes were being fitted for suicide attacks. At the time, all Truman could go on was the incredibly bitter Japanese fighting in all the battles so far (the Japanese surrendered more freely in the Manchuria campaign, but I doubt the Soviets had given Truman enough information to realize it then).

I'd say that the demonstration that the US would commit mass slaughter of innocents was in the March fire-bombing of Tokyo, which killed considerably more people than any other bombing attack in history.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

It is impossible to judge people after talking to vets on either side, you think the common soldier had the option of clicking Axis or Allies and fight their favorite nemesis?

I agree with you, which is why I find the Germany chase of "Nazi War Criminals" in 2015 so sad...

That recent prosecution of the SS man who cataloged Jewish belongings is a travesty... He didn't kill anyone and had no ability to stop it... Yes, he was there, but what was he supposed to do about it? Protest? The environment would not have allowed that.

We preach that you can't use the excuse "just following orders", but that is applying Western viewpoints to other people. When the option is, "follow the order or get shot yourself", what do we honestly expect? That you'll take the bullet? That is absurd.

We tried and convicted a whole lot of people who didn't have any choice or say in what they did and had they refused, they would have been killed themselves.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

"There are really no rules in war" - there are "The Hague laws and Geneva Conventions are some of the most widely applied of these international agreements."

You're welcome to apply them... if you win...

Those are agreements, but you have to keep in mind there is a reason we call them "sovereign nations". No one can really tell a sovereign nation what to do, unless defeated in war.

As time passes, the history of events gets updated and corrected and the next generation reap the guilt of their forefathers actions.

No one should feel the guilt of their forefathers actions. Japan right now is trying to deny a lot of what they did during WWII, to avoid guilt and shame.

This is stupid, they should not feel shame for what other people did in another time. A better choice would be to admit what was done, say they are sorry that it happened, vow that they will never do it, and move on.

My forefathers owned slaves. Was that wrong? Yes. Am I responsible? No. Do I feel guilt or shame? No. Do I promise to never own a slave? Yes.

To all who descend from slavery, I'm sorry that it happened, I agree that it was wrong, I have no doubt that it sucked... But please don't blame me for it, I didn't do it. Lets just all agree to not do it again and move forward...

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

By the "Japanese", we have to mean the Japanese Government, rather than individual Japanese citizens or officials, and the Liaison Council had to be unanimously accepting of surrender in order to do it.

In fact, the Liaison Council simply couldn't agree on terms. The hard-liners were planning to repel the first US invasion and then maybe ask for better terms. The only terms they might have agreed to would have been to admit loss, keeping the current government in power, with no Allied trials of Japanese war criminals, and evacuation of occupied areas on Japan's schedule.

The Japanese were clearly informed that the Japanese people would decide on their future government, which meant that the Japanese people would have to decide if there would continue to be an Emperor.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Look, can you give a crap for the fate of the hundreds of millions of civilians living under Japanese occupation, and dying in large numbers? My best estimate is that the Chinese civilian deaths would have exceeded the Hiroshima and Nagasaki deaths combined within two months. This excludes all the others in the Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> Because we won the war, our children now have the luxury to question it.

That does not seem to be the case, unfortunately.

We must reflect on our actions, that is essential to our development. In the case of nukes, it seems our hand was too heavy, and such error is common in times of war. It happens every time some uses a new weapon.

Recognition of such fact would at least provide closure and would be a source of maybe stronger ties between the nations which finally signed an everlasting peace.

Sadly, people cannot accept any questioning about such facts; it's almost as a religious question. They even label it "revisionism" as if that was a dirty word, when in fact studying History is always a revisionism. In some ways, it is as if WWII never ended for them... and never will end.

On a more positive note, I see Japan (and some Japanese companies) has come forward and apologized for war incidents. I wish the US would have the maturity to be better winners as Japan is showing maturity in its loss.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

After the war, the US launched the Strategic Bombing Survey to determine how effective the various tactics used in both theatres were at achieving their objectives - everything from attacks against oil infrastructure to the atomic bombs. It made use of vast numbers of interviews and the huge troves of documents captured after the war to be able to get a comprehensive view. The report indicated that the atomic bombs had no impact on the voting of Japan's war council

Maybe they didn't... So what? Did Truman (who made the ultimate decision to use them) know this in July 1945?

It doesn't matter what was known in 1947, or 2015, only what was known in 1945.

Another point worth considering is that everyone was tired of the war and wanted to end it, and few people felt really sorry for the Japs, who had started the whole thing.

Let me put this another way... Had we used 1,000 B-29 bombers and conventional bombs and killed the same number of people, would anyone be talking about it today? No, they would not.

Similar things were done in Europe, even up to the last few months of the war, when it was clearly over, and we still sent a 1,000 bomber raid against Berlin on Hitler's Birthday, the final thousand bomber raid of the war. What was the point of that? But no one talks about it.

The nuclear weapons used against Japan are talked about because, "oh my God the Nuclears!" People have an irrational fear of nuclear weapons, as if they are some doom force that will destroy the world. Tactical nuclear weapons, which is what Fat Man and Little Boy were, are not such weapons, they did destroy those two cities, but both were rebuilt and life carries on. 200,000 civilians were killed in Tokyo via firebombing from thousands of B-29s. Why does no one have such heated conversations about that?

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

The Empire of Japan under the likes of Tojo was evil, its utter destruction and the rebuilding of Japan as a peaceable and democratic state was good, and whether anyone likes it or not, that was only going to come with an unconditional surrender, something not even the Hiroshima bomb produced. Remember, it took two of them to finally convince the Emperor that the war was not only unwinnable, but would lead to the destruction of much of Japan if he allowed his ministers and his armed forces to continue this suicidal campaign of fighting to the death.

Thank you... All these people who want to change one part of history while ignoring another would do well to read what you just wrote...

Had we allowed them to keep their government as it was and avoid unconditional surrender, we would not have the Japan of today...

Japan was perfectly free to surrender unconditionally before the bombs were used... They did not do so, but they did after the second one...

Re: It is what it is

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The US did not want to have to split Japan with the Soviets the way they did Germany (and Europe as a whole). So forcing capitulation just as Russia was ramping up in Asia, post VE-day was high priority.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you are Monday morning quarterbacking. The big difference between the WW2 era and today is the globe wasn't infested with a bunch of mewling hand wringing pussies unable to make hard decisions and then stand by them.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the Japanese comfort women. Captured women enslaved as sex slaves for troops.

Re: It is what it is

[C0R1D4N]

Only because we wouldn't accept anything less than unconditional surrender from the Japanese. We could have negotiated a more equitable peace treaty before Hiroshima.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The trinity test was a plutonium bomb. The design of the two dropped bombs was different, one a uranium "bullet" design, the other an implosion plutonium bomb like trinity. Additionally if a demonstration was given, the dropped bomb may not have worked, and the Japanese may well have moved prisoners into the demonstration area.

The target cites both were militarily significant, as well as having geography to enhance the effect. From munitions plants, steelworks, shipyards, military headquarters, and much more. They were carefully selected.

Re:It is what it is

[rogoshen1]

Non-Military, are you sure?

Hiroshima:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(During the Pacific War, Kure acted as Japan's largest single naval base and arsenal. Most of the city's industry and workforce supported the naval installations and associated support functions. In the later stages of the conflict Kure came under sustained aerial bombardment culminating in the Bombing of Kure in June and July 1945)

Nagasaki:
"During World War II, at the time of the nuclear attack on August 9, 1945, Nagasaki was an important industrial city, containing both plants of the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, the Akunoura Engine Works, Mitsubishi Arms Plant, Mitsubishi Electric Shipyards, Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, several other small factories, and most of the ports storage and trans-shipment facilities, which employed about 90% of the city's labor force, and accounted for 90% of the city's industry. These connections with the Japanese war effort made Nagasaki a major target for bombing by the Allies during the war."

Re:It is what it is

[Krishnoid]

I'm quite sure some people in Japan consider the fire bombing of Tokyo a war crime, but they haven't been able to do anything about it, now have they?

They became an engineering and manufacturing (?) giant, stealing some of the superiority from the US. That should count, right?

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> People say two bombs were necessary to stop the war... Really?

> How could Japan possibly surrender with just one bomb if they had no time to think

Why would you want anyone to think on it? Time was costing lives. The second bomb was a different practical yield, but was sufficiently strong to demonstrate that it wasn't an accident that the US was taking credit for and could be repeated (we claimed we could drop them all day long, which was untrue). This put an impetus on the Japanese to surrender ASAP. That was the point.

Re:It is what it is

[rogoshen1]

Maybe if Germany had been forced to unconditionally surrender after WWI, the elements of their society that were vulnerable to nationalism and 'revenge' would have been weeded out, and WWII might not have had a European Theater.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

> a failure to supply equipment demonstrate that the reality is far, far less than the omnipotence suggested.

Omnipotence was not claimed. The US fights a LOT. It's very good at estimating outcomes, statistically. How could you interpret that badly?

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely, the US would have turned back to neutral, and let Europe fall to the facists.

Whether Germany could invade the US is a different story, and I believe they simply couldn't, even with Nukes, you can't subdue a population that is willing to fight.

What worked with Japan would NOT have worked with the US. The US did not have the same political and religious structure as Japan, you simply don't have the humilating surrender of a god-emporer in the US to subdue the population like you did in Japan.

And Germany simply didn't have the resources or foresight to build a bomb, and even if they did, that project would have been competing with every other crazy super weapon that Hitler wanted (jet fighters, V1/V2's, Super Tanks, all manner of crazy crap)

Even if Germany had instead concentrated on simply cheap weapondry, they were fighting a two front war (because again of stupid decisions by Hitler to attack Russia) and simply didn't have the resources or man power to even invade England, let alone the US.

Yes nuclear weapons in the hands of Hitler would have been scary, but remember, once revealed, the US and Russia would have gone headlong into projects to research the same. Meanwhile, they would have simultaneously sought to destroy any and all facilities that allowed the manufacture of said weapons.

Simply giving Hitler a few bombs at the end of '43 or '44 would have changed very little.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to ask is what would you not do to save the life of a loved one. They are going to die, and you can stop it, but you must do something horrible.

How horrible must that act be for you to say 'I cannot do this, and therefore I am condemning my lived one to their death'

Now, modify it, change it so that it's not just a single beloved person, but your entire family/city/state/province/country/world and all the people in it. And then re-examine that horrible act.

If the fate of the entire planet was at stake, and I was the only one who could save it with a single act, I think there's very little I would not do to save it.

Re:It is what it is

[davester666]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/18/john-mccain/history-supports-mccains-stance-on-waterboarding/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html?_r=0

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

What is really a crime is that many countries are still thinking that using an atomic bomb to define their victory at a war is really a valid option. And after some nuclear exchanges we would all be forced to go to live to another planet.
But the story of the american nucking of Japan is so interesting that should deserve a special movie...
This is what I have learned of it until now...
German Nobel Price, Prof.Lenard,being too lazy to rethink all his knowledge of physics. Managed to expell from Germany, A.Einstein and his revolutionary 'jewish thinking'. Einstein, in America, looked surprised when his mates showed him that his theories would become the world's first Atomic Bomb.
Project Manhattan would end the 'X Ray Project' as an alternative to attack Japan with millons of bats released from a container with a little Napalm tied to their tails to burn the wooden parts of the cities.
A.Hittler, instead of congratulating prof.Lennard for his loyalty, ordered him to focus all his attention into studying A.Einstein's theories . And design an Atomic Bomb, before the Americans...
While working at the P.Manhattan, A.Einstein started thinking in creating a more lucrative invention. And patented a refrigerator that needed no electricity to work. But he didn't succeed selling them and his project was bought by Electrolux and dumpled to be forgotten.

Re:It is what it is

[JeffOwl]

Now you are being deluded, put the KoolAid down for a minute and get past the raw numbers. The Japanese not only put war material production in the center of civilian populations, it actually spread it into the surrounding residential areas using mom and pop shops to create lower level components and assemblies that were forwarded to the big factories for inclusion in final assembly. War production is a legitimate target. But none of this is specific to the nuclear bombings. The firebombings and other area bombing attacks that were taking place throughout 1945 killed more people than the nuclear attacks did.

Re: It is what it is

[painandgreed]

The Japanese also were as close or closer than Nazi Germany at producing their own atomic bomb. And I like San Francisco myself, as well as the Pacific Northwest...

Which is to say, the Japanese might have thought it was possible and had a bunch of yellowcake that Nazis gave them (on the last sub out of Nazi Germany). From everything I've read, the Nazis didn't think a bomb was possible but were working on a nuclear power plant to power industry, but even this was put more and more on the back burner as the war went on. It didn't help that they were looking into heavy water reactor which wasn't a very good idea. Their research direction was greatly influenced by Heisenberg whose opinions might have been influenced by his discussion with Bohr in 1941.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

After the first bomb was dropped the Emperor was authorized to officially ask for terms for a surrender.

The terms of surrender had already been communicated many times to the Japanese leadership (complete and unconditional). Asking for terms at that point is the same as saying "we don't accept your current terms of surrender". Essentially, they called Truman's bluff that there would be more bombs on the way. He wasn't bluffing.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

They became an engineering and manufacturing (?) giant, stealing some of the superiority from the US. That should count, right?

While of course I meant in a military fashion, since that is what we're talking about... In a sense, the long view would say that their rise is a testimate to our way of life, that we converted them to the Western worldview and in return that shows that we're right and the communist and fascist ways are wrong.

We also got a strong ally out of it, which doesn't hurt.

It doesn't bother me that Japan has done well, I'm happy for them. We both build each other up and become stronger for the relationship.

Re:It is what it is

[ganjadude]

they were not mostly non military, they were industrial cities

Re:It is what it is

[ganjadude]

sure, also sexism cause why not?

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

If Hiroshima was a valuable military target, why was it not attacked earlier? They selected two cities that had been largely untouched by bombing, despite the US having the capability to hit them.

Re:It is what it is

[KGIII]

After the Rape of Nanking (spelling?), and many other such atrocities, maybe targeting civilians was the correct thing to do. It was not like the Japanese citizens were decrying there own government's treatment of enemy civilians, they were highly indoctrinated and willing to die for said government. There were no mass surrenders like you had in Europe. They were very willing to die an live in horrific conditions and work very hard and to be very smart and creative.

Today, when we bomb little brown people, the general consensus is to bitch about the increased fuel prices.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not sure what the rules were back then, but these days killing civilians for vengeance is a war crime. Any retaliation against civilians for the actions of the military is.

Re:It is what it is

[AmiMoJo]

Japanese civilians are mostly victims of their military, just like the Chinese and Koreans who were murdered or worse. After the war the rest if Europe didn't blame German civilians for what the Nazis did, and those guys were actually elected. They recognised that the average German was not responsible for the holocaust.

Japan has issues with history, of course. But do do plenty of other countries, including the US, and it's mostly not the fault of average citizens.

Re:It is what it is

[KGIII]

There are some historians who opine that the Japanese did not even surrender due to the bombs but, rather, surrendered because the Russians were coming and the Russians had an old score to settle with them - namely the embarrassing loss in the Russo-Japanese war earlier in the century. That is my understanding of their claim - I am not sure that any one single reason could be called correct though.

Re:It is what it is

[KGIII]

I guess we could say that it fiss'led out.

I do apologize.

Re:It is what it is

[KGIII]

Japan did not surrender unconditionally. They surrendered with the condition that the emperor be allowed to live and immune from prosecution. At least that is how I recall it. So, mostly, it was unconditional but not quite.

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

" The laws of war "

The only folks who can say that phrase with a straight face have obviously never been in one.

There is only one rule in War that matters: Kill your enemy before he kills you. There aren't any time outs. No do-overs. You fight to win or you don't go to War in the first place.

That is it. There is NOTHING about the business of killing people that is civilized. Not then, now, or ever.

Was the bomb horrific ? Absolutely. It was supposed to be. The entire program was designed to make the war so costly for the enemy, that it would be pointless to continue.

If you had to choose between one million dead, and ten million dead would you really opt for the latter over the former based solely on the weapon type used ?

Dead is dead folks. The how is irrelevant.

If using such a horrific weapon ultimately saves lives in some perverted way, then by all means use it.

Re:It is what it is

[cavreader]

The entire Japanese home island was a valid military target in WW2. The idiocy around thinking you could actually win a war while pulling your punches didn't come along to long after WW2 ended.

Re:It is what it is

[JeffOwl]

Lets not be deluded. Killing 80 000 civilians in one go (and many many more because in the aftermath of the bomb ) is a war crime.

So the American war crimes started way before the atomic bomb was dropped then? Let's be consistent, the commanding generals of most of the air forces in WWII were war criminals is, I believe, what you are trying to say. The type of weapon is a red herring, the cities would have been burned to the ground anyway, with probably similar loss of life (see the firebombing of Tokyo). Most of the Japanese cities were already bombed or burned out, the only difference is with the weapons used. The only reason those cities remained at all was because they were slated for the atomic bombs. And make no mistake, the type of weapon used saved American lives on those two days, probably a few hundred in those raids alone. Prior bombing campaigns were conducted with massive numbers of bombers and some were always lost. This was done with just a few B-29s and no American airmen were lost.

Also note that in Japan war manufacturing was located in civilian population centers, much of which was distributed into the residential areas in mom and pop shops with only a few employees mostly to make small components that would feed the major factories. Japan knew full well what it was doing when it set up that way, they were trying to hide war production behind civilians.

Curtis LeMay was man enough to recognise that strategic bombing, that is the indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets to break the will of the enemy was a war crime.

That is not what strategic bombing is. That is terror bombing. Strategic bombing is trying to destroy the economy, infrastructure, sources of raw material, and industry used to wage war. Civilian impact is incidental and caused by the intentional placement of war production in civilian areas. I'm not saying there wasn't some terror bombing going on from both sides, but there is a difference.

And he would have ended as a criminal had he not been on the victorious side. History and law is written by the victors always. And many times this skews the moral analysis of the events.

Of course he would have, so would a lot of other allied leaders.

Re:It is what it is

[dbIII]

That's what was wished for by the Japanese military, and indeed by Mussolini in Italy although not to as great an extent. In hindsight historians don't have a lot to go on to tell the reality from the Japanese propaganda and desires of the rulers, so how how you be so certain?

Re: It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact numbers don't matter, letting Americans die to avoid using the bomb on Japan would have been treason. If you are commanding a military, it's your job to put your country's people first.

Re:It is what it is

[Krishnoid]

In a sense, the long view would say that their rise is a testimate to our way of life, that we converted them to the Western worldview and in return that shows that we're right and the communist and fascist ways are wrong.

Sort of ... W. Edwards Deming wrote a couple books on this subject -- Japanese companies adopted the principles that he (an American) brought to them, and went from being synonymous with poor quality to the opposite. In the meantime, American companies pretty much ignored what he had to say.

So they were definitely converted, but you could say there were two opposing 'Western' worldviews on this. Which is the 'real' one, I can't say.

Re:It is what it is

[ultranova]

It's bizarre how these people just show up with one thought: AMERIKKKA BAD and will not be dissuaded from this conclusion.

Is that what this is really about? The fear that admitting any wrongdoing makes US the villain of the story when it's quite obviously the hero, and all that's being discussed is whether using nukes as a finishing move against the villain went too far? A debate which, in a world where a suitcase/shipping container nuke is a potential threat, US would probably be better off losing, I might add.

I guess national cults never really went away, and perhaps they can't - perhaps a nation requires reverence from its citizens to be able to perform its tasks. But the idea that these "national spirits" can't make mistakes and deserve unquestioning obedience needs to go. It's not true, and will only get more destructive as we continue getting stronger. Accurate feedback is important.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact is all sides act like barbarians in all out war, none can hold their head high, the firebombing of Dresden and other European cities and the nukes on Japan were truly barbaric acts, purposefully designed to kill large numbers of civilians, each of these events slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians in a very short time.

You are delusional. None of these were barbaric acts. Perhaps you have played too many computer games and as a result do not understand the nature of real warfare.

In the real world, you don't get to just resume a saved game when you don't like how things turn out. The leaders of the Allied nations had a responsibility to the mothers and fathers whose sons (and in some cases daughters, such as the nurses) who went off to war. Though they were committed to ending Nazi and Japanese aggression, this responsibility meant bringing home as many of those sons and daughters as they could. Since everything human beings do is imperfect, this process and the decisions associated with it was also imperfect, but they generally did the best they could. Again, they didn't have the option to quit and resume a saved game: they had to pick courses of action that were likely to produce the desired results on the first attempt.

The Germans and Japanese had years of time in which to evacuate the civilians not involved in the war effort, such as the children (the British managed to so this in a matter of only weeks when their cities were threatened), from the vicinity of likely targets.

Everybody else, by choosing to work in the military installations and factories, became a target by their own choice. Logistics has always dominated warfare, and modern warfare is characterized by a high rate of attrition of equipment and supplies. Those working in the factories or on the rails were every bit as much a part of the military effort as the soldiers on the front lines, because without them the solders would have been starving and out of ammunition. This made them legitimate strategic targets (usually, the civilians in these jobs were proud of their contribution, with the exception of the socialists, anarchists, or similar fringe groups, who were actively involved in staging strikes or doing other things to hinder the war effort).

Destroying enemy factories -- and the structures in which the factory workers stayed while they worked at producing war materials -- helped to bring large numbers of Allied children home alive (likely several million lives). Stop the bullets from getting to the soldiers, and they can't use them to kill your children. It's that simple.

Dresden was a major transportation hub, and such locations have been legitimate military targets since modern land war started to critically depend on the transportation network for the movement of troops, equipment, and supplies (about the time of the US Civil War). The role of Dresden as a rail hub was especially important, since the only way to efficiently move supplies over land is via rail. This is how one moves raw materials to refineries, then refined goods to factories, then moves the finished goods (such as artillery, tanks, and ammunition) close enough to the front to be useful, when water transport is not available. The final leg of the transport journey is by truck, half-track, mule, or humans, none of which are as efficient as rail when large amounts of material needs to be moved long distances. This makes the rail system (including warehouses) a critical target. By the nature of things, the rail system tends to be most concentrated in cities. Similarly, docks in a city are critical to transportation, since water movement is potentially even more efficient than rail, making cities with docks critical targets.

Hiroshima was a major military center, with a large garrison, and Nagasaki was a major production site for military supplies and equipment, as well as a major port and transportation hub.

Giving the order to attack these locations was an action of go

Re:It is what it is

[MightyMartian]

What precisely does fault have to do with it? Have you missed my entire point, that, when push comes to shove, there are no civilians in Total War. Every single citizen of a belligerent effectively becomes a part of the war machine. I'm not attempting to defend it, but this is the fact of modern general conflicts, and it's the reason we should avoid them at all costs.

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

[citation needed], that's unsourced supposition. Please go look up the definition of "revisionist history".

Re:It is what it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Your analysis ignores the fact that the opinion of the Japanese government didn't matter because it was a mere puppet of the military. The same military that had a proven track record of executing government officials that didn't comply with the military's orders.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

The Japanese Army would have been directing the defense, and sparing no one. The original Japanese strategy had been to grab a lot of territory, defend it tenaciously, and make it clear to the Allies that defeating Japan wasn't worth the cost. This strategy was still in effect, and hadn't actually failed.

Exactly what would have happened to the children being trained is pretty speculative, but some would have wound up in the front lines. The Japanese Army had no history of being defeated easily, and wasn't about to start.

It would have been a bloodbath, much like Iwo Jima or Okinawa, and civilian casualties would have been extremely high (the Japanese Army was strongly in favor of civilians killing themselves rather than being captured, and very often enforced that).

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

Clay Blair, in "Hitler's U-boat War", came to the conclusion that the Germans were never close to victory in the Atlantic. He had some pretty good reasons.

There was no bloody way Germany was going to start with 300 U-boats. It would have required more resources than the German Navy had to spare just to build them, and it would have been very difficult to train 300 competent crews by September 1939. Hitler would have had to interfere with the Navy more than he liked, as in 1939 the Navy was commanded by Raeder, who was a battleship admiral.

Germany could not have had 300 U-boats within the confines of the 1935 treaty with Britain, and any attempt to do that would have had a big impact on British politics and rearmament. It would have been a large expenditure of resources aimed squarely at Britain, and Chamberlain would have reacted accordingly.

The Germans were doing their best in 1940. There was a real scare in early 1943, but the large number of sinkings was counterbalanced by heavy German U-boat losses, as innovations like escort carriers and very-long-range Liberator conversions were closing the gaps in air coverage. The Germans couldn't keep up the effort for long.

Re:It is what it is

[david_thornley]

The most important thing about Hiroshima, militarily, was that it contained the headquarters that was coordinating the defense of Kyushu (southernmost of the four Japanese Home Islands). That hadn't been true, or important, for much of the bombing campaign.

Re:It is what it is

[FlyHelicopters]

A few thoughts:

There was no bloody way Germany was going to start with 300 U-boats.

Not in 1939, but Germany was on a 10 year Navy build program running from 1935 to 1945. The Navy had been told to be ready for war in 1945 and they had plans to have 300 U-boats ready then.

That actually could have been done, but the war started 5 and a half years early.

Germany could not have had 300 U-boats within the confines of the 1935 treaty with Britain

Hitler broke that treaty, which is why she was building Battleships in the first place. Britain couldn't really complain since they had done so as well.

It would have been a large expenditure of resources aimed squarely at Britain, and Chamberlain would have reacted accordingly.

He did, for all the bad press Chamberlain has gotten, much of it deserved, he did start rearmament in 1938. It was way too late however, it needed to be started in 1936.

The Germans were doing their best in 1940. There was a real scare in early 1943, but the large number of sinkings was counterbalanced by heavy German U-boat losses

The bigger scares came with the first and second "happy times" in 1940 and 1942.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

By 1943 the battle of the Atlantic was lost... U-Boats kept fighting until the end of the war, but largely out of desperation and having nothing else to do than with any real expectation of winning.

The real chance was in 1940, prior to invading the Soviet Union. Had Hitler put that off a year and focused 100% on Great Britain, he had a chance of winning. Once he invaded the Soviet Union, it was all over. He completely and totally had no idea what he was getting into by invading them, the reserves of manpower and material dwarfed what Germany could produce, after that it was just a matter of time. Even then, he did really well for the first year, but the USSR recovered and that was that.

Going back to the Atlantic, had the decision in 1935 been made to not build the big gun battleships but instead use those resources to build U-Boats, Germany probably could have had 120 to 150 of them ready in 1939 (you can built a lot of U-Boats out of the resources from a single Battleship).

Sept 1, 1939, Germany had less than 40 U-Boats, had they had 120 of them, they might have pulled it off. It took years before Great Britain had the ships and crews to fight them. By the time Germany did have 200 U-Boats, the British were ready to fight them and had trained ships and crews and the technology was ready.

The other problem is that while England advanced their technology, the Germans did not. They were still building Type 7 U-Boats in 1943, long after they should have been retired.

There is an illusion today among younger people...

[FlyHelicopters]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people, that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.

WWI was supposed to be "the war to end all wars", and it was horribly out done by WWII just 20 years later. We've had, more or less, 70 years of world peace since then, depending on how you look at it (there were a whole lot of regional wars during that time).

I don't like nuclear weapons, I hate them, they are horrible things that I wish had no use. But if wishes were fishes we'd all eat for free, and wishing for them to all go away misses the point. If just one evil power has them, then we all need them, or rather, a few reasonable and responsible powers need them.

Oh sure, the total number might go down, we might get down to 1,000 each for Russia and the US, maybe 300 for UK and France, etc. But we just aren't going to zero. The genie is out of the bottle and you can't invent it.

Manichean?

[Black Parrot]

Manicheans believe(d) in ethical dualism, but not all "good-vs-evil" ventures are Manichean, or even Zoroasterian.

Re:Manichean?

[cold fjord]

I like fresh ground Zoroasterian coffee, fresh as the morning due.

Re:Manichean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Manicheism. So even back then, Iranian religious nuts were trying to build an atomic bomb.

Stunning Drop-Off in War Deaths Since

[Kunedog]

This whole vid is well worth your time (seriously, make a note to watch the whole thing today if you haven't), but the last section (starting at 14:20) is particularly striking in how few war deaths have occured since the invention (and rapid development/manufacture) of nuclear weapons.

Re:Stunning Drop-Off in War Deaths Since

[thinkwaitfast]

That's what people are really upset about. There can never be another WWII, prolonged, drawn out war for survival.

War is fun (especially for those not actually fighting)

Re:Stunning Drop-Off in War Deaths Since

[Idou]

Yes, and to think, the only cost was the real but abstract to the human mind risk of killing off all life on the planet (and it almost happened on more than one occasion. . .).

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Z00L00K]

As horrible as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were they have also served as severe deterrents against nuclear usage in war since.

Unfortunately they won't deter true terrorists that are willing to die for their cause. I can imagine that a container can get loaded with a nuke and then delivered to the port of Los Angeles, New York or Amsterdam where it will go off.

Are we really down to 16,300?

[dprimary]

If that is true was have reduced the amount by 10's of thousands.

Re:Are we really down to 16,300?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things: The original numbers were wildly inflated for propaganda reasons and a large amount of excess plutonium that was never actually machined for bomb parts, was burned for electricity production after the various SALT talks. The 16000 figure is probably still wildly inflated.

Re:Are we really down to 16,300?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that is true about military numbers, is that all military numbers are untrue.

Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Lives

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look back at the volume of casualties of all the major" wars throughout history (particularly since 500AD)... grouped into say - 50yr data points.
You can easily find a trend line. Contrary to popular myth, the trend line was falling (not growing) in the 1800's and 1900-1950.
But - if we look at the casualty count projected "on-trend", and compare it with the "actual" casualty count from 1950 until today... The stalemate of the A-Bomb has reduced war casualties by roughly half (that's a lot of saved lives).

Lastly - the time frame between August, 1945 and August, 1949 - in which America had a nuclear monopoly - proves American exceptional-ism. The history of the planet earth has no other example (not one) in which a nation has had sole possession of an "Apex Weapon"... but chose NOT to use it immediately for world conquest. We didn't use the A-bomb to bring Russia to heel, or to expand America's borders or to annex precious resources (like the oil-rich middle-east).

We are the good guys, and it was necessary - evidenced by the fact that Japan needed TWO before willingness to surrender.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[0123456]

Japan was trying to surrender. It just wasn't willing to surrender unconditionally, which is what the US government demanded.

But, in general, I agree. Nuclear weapons have probably been the best thing ever invented for bringing relative peace to the world. Of course, one day, they'll be used again and millions will die, but, until then, they've probably been more beneficial than harmful.

False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

Every time, every time this knee-jerk excuse comes out. As if we had exactly two options in the entire universe. Because if we didn't nuke them or immediately invade them then... what? They were poised to invade California?

Give me a fucking break. There more than two options on the table. For example, they considered an option to invite Axis observers to watch as little boy was harmlessly detonated in the desert, but they turned it down because they were eager to see what kind of damage the thing would do in the real world. I'm not out to vilify the USA here--the rules of war were different back then and no one hands were clean (certainly not the Japanese.) The atomic bombs weren't the worse thing that happened in the war, and on the whole I think we behaved better than the Axis powers. And our ultimate aims were obviously much more noble.

But this brainlessly patriotic excuse is just so fucking pathetic. I could grant all of the premises, including the false dichotomy. So, for the sake of argument, I concede Hiroshima. And now... what of Nagasaki? Three fucking days later? Because their initial response to Hiroshima was almost an unconditional surrender but there was some question marks about the dispensation of their emperor, that justified another nuke?

It was wrong. Get over it. Jefferson was a great president even if he fucked up on slavery. And WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be. But 70+ years later, this intellectual dishonesty is pointless and downright embarrassing--no different than the stubborn Japanese refusals to fully acknowledge their atrocities in China.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[techno-vampire]

It's not that we would have had to invade them immediately, it's that we were already planning the invasion and training the troops for it. I know, because I had a friend who was a Navy Corpsman serving with the Marines in the Pacific in 1945. They were being trained for the invasion of Japan, and he said on more than one occasion that he probably wouldn't have survived the first day if they'd had to go in. In fact, he was part of a live fire exercise on Tinian when they got the word of the surrender, but were told to keep down and complete the exercise because the airplanes providing the live fire hadn't been told yet and they didn't want anybody to stand up and get killed.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

they considered an option to invite Axis observers to watch as little boy was harmlessly detonated in the desert

Are you serious? They didn't even quit after the first bomb was dropped. What makes you think they'd have done so after just a demonstration?

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

Incorrect. They did 'quit'. Immediately. They just asked that we let them keep their emperor and we responded (and I'm paraphrasing): "BAHAHAHA, YOU DIDN'T SAY PRETTY PLEASE! *KABOOM* "

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

Give me a fucking break. There more than two options on the table. For example, they considered an option to invite Axis observers to watch as little boy was harmlessly detonated in the desert, but they turned it down because they were eager to see what kind of damage the thing would do in the real world.

That option would not have worked.

Two bombs were dropped, because Japan did not surrender after the first one.

Japan did not surrender after the first one, because the did not believe the U.S. could not *possibly* have had a second one.

So detonating *one* bomb in the desert would have done nothing to get them to reconsider pursuing the war they started by attacking Perl Harbor.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

1. The fact that we were planning for an invasion does not affect that "either immediate invasion OR we nuke them twice" is a false dichotomy.

2. The poster I was replying to was clearly relying on that dichotomy to unreservedly justify the bombings.

You want to argue that Hiroshima was justified that's fine, but you cannot begin by pretending that the USA was forced into a corner and had only two options in front of us. (And I'm still not sure how anyone can justify Nagasaki without falling back on blatant lies.)

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Elky Elk]

Every month the war was continued hundreds of thousands of civilians died across the greater east asia co-properity sphere. So if you didn't nuke or invade immediately you still end up with loads of dead civilians.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

Ah, the magic of lazy patriotism. You have Wikipedia at your fingertips--why don't you go educate yourself?

I repeat, Japan DID surrender after the first one, but they wanted to keep their emperor (there may have been a few other details, I forget.) Instead of hashing out the terms of surrender or simply giving them a little more time to assess the damage, we bombed three days after Hiroshima. Let me say that again, the second bomb came just seventy-two hours later. In the age before satellites or the internet. Do you think the Japanese government had any idea what the casualty count was? At that point in time, do you think that the majority of officers in their military and advisers to the emperor even fully appreciated what an atomic bomb was?

Re: False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

The binning of Nagasaki was to send a message to the soviets. Note the date in the article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

This is a reasonable first step towards a reasonable argument. However, there's immediately and there's "immediately". Are you trying to say that 50,000+ civilians would have died if we waited more than three days between the nukes?

And were the Japanese actively subjugating and butchering Chinese at that point in time, or were they more focused on fighting the Russians and/or retreating back to Japan? (This is a genuine question; it's not an area of WWII history I'm familiar with.)

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Darinbob]

We finished the fight with Germany and could focus everything on Japan. We could have blockaded them, which would have caused a lot of deaths as well but possibly not as many.

There were a couple of things going on. First, the US wanted unconditional surrender, not just surrender. We wanted revenge for daring to attack first. Second, the US wanted to get the war out of the way in order to deal with problem of the USSR.

Nagasaki had fewer casualties, mostly because of hills surrounding the epicenter that stopped a lot of the spread of damage. But the US didn't like it as a first choice because it was too far in the south and they wanted something more central - it was a terror attack after all.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Darinbob]

The US wanted an unconditional surrender, true.. However the Japanese military was also divided about whether or not there were more bombs available, or whether things were hopeless, and of course there are always the die-hard generals on any side.

We could have demonstrated and then sued for peace negotiations. It would be like saying that war is expensive and we have more important things to do, so let's just stop fighting the Taliban and pull out of Iraq; theoretically possible but politically very difficult.

Remember that against the Nazis, both the western and eastern fronts essentially met each other, racing to see who would get to Berlin first, and still the high command wasn't surrendering.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[techno-vampire]

The problem was (or at least, was thought to be) that the Japanese might easily persuade themselves that what happened to Hiroshima either wasn't an A-bomb or that we were only able to make the one. Once that assumption's granted, it's hard to see what other choices they had. I won't argue that the Japanese really believed that because I don't know for sure, one way or the other, but President Truman and his advisers didn't feel that they were justified in taking that chance. In the end, they made the decision they thought they had to make and all we can do is second guess them after the fact. Personally, I've long believed that neither nuking them nor invasion were the right answer. Japan relied on importing food because they couldn't grow enough to feed themselves and we'd already sunk most of their shipping fleet. All we had to do is keep them blockaded until they either surrendered or starved, but the American people wanted to get the war over with and I doubt that they'd have accepted such a slow solution to the issue.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[AmiMoJo]

Thanks for saying that. This is worth a read: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

It's interesting to note that the classic justification for the bombs - that it saved American lives - only came long after they had been dropped.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, you're clearly ignorant of the Japanese surrender propositions both prior to and after Hiroshima. Immunity for the emperor and a continuing role as head of state were far far from the only Japanese conditions.
Secondly, mid war, when the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the axis were proven and not just rumors, the allies decided to accept nothing less than unconditional surrender from the axis. This was so that the monsters responsable for the horrors could not escape justice. It was far from proven at that point that the Emperor was as removed from responsibility as it turned out.

Posted AC to conserve mods.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Elky Elk]

I'm sorry I did only address the first boming, with regards to the second: There were three separate coup attempts and the cabinet were still debating what to do, so a significant proportion of the army and navy leadership were willing to continue the war anyway, I think there was also some debate as to whether the americans only had one bomb. The second bombing removed any ambiguity as to what the allies could do and what they were willing to do. If we have 250000 deaths/month in the empire and the 2nd bombing only brought forward the cabinets inevitable decision to surrender by a week, it would still be death neutral, and its far from certain that decision was inevitable. The co-propersity sphere was a vast area of the earth, the soviets had only invaded Mancuria in northeast China. It would have had little impact on the divisions in southern China, Burma, south east asia, the east indies, the pacific etc.

Re: False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

Nagasaki was justified because of imperial Japanese war crimes.

So was the fire bombing.

F those people.

Also in Deutscheland.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

It was wrong. Get over it.

You're welcome to your opinion... That doesn't make you right...

So, for the sake of argument, I concede Hiroshima. And now... what of Nagasaki? Three fucking days later?

You seem to be under the impression that everyone knew in 1945 what a nuclear bomb was.

We bombed a city, then bombed another one... a nuke from a single plane or a hundred thousand bombs from a thousand bombers, what's the difference?

And WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be.

And that attitude is why we lost in Vietnam... we weren't ruthless ENOUGH...

War is not a vocation for the weak at heart, which you appear to be... You hit the enemy with everything, 100% of the available force, hold nothing back, obliterate them...

The fastest way to stop the killing is to win as fast as possible, that means crushing the enemy so hard that he surrenders as fast as possible and everyone else gets the message that you're not to be messed with...

no different than the stubborn Japanese refusals to fully acknowledge their atrocities in China.

That would ONLY be true if we were refusing to acknowledge that we nuked Japan at all. We aren't denying that, Japan is starting to openly deny that they did what they did.

Those aren't remotely the same and if you think they are you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

Incorrect. They did 'quit'. Immediately.

You need to go back to school and learn some history, that isn't what happened at all.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[foreverdisillusioned]

See my other post on this topic about Wikipedia's omissions. I have actually read pretty extensively on this point, although not recently. Even if everything I remember (about the multiple offers of surrender) is completely wrong, the undisputed fact remains Japan wanted to surrender, in some fashion, immediately following the first bomb.

Vaporizing 40,000+ civilians is not a morally acceptable way to pressure someone re: terms of surrender. If you believe that nuking a highly populated area three days later was the only choice we had... you are not thinking very hard.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

Vaporizing 40,000+ civilians is not a morally acceptable way to pressure someone re: terms of surrender.

"Morals" is just another word for "opinion"...

In fact, nuking another city is actually an excellent way to pressure someone to surrender on your terms...

If you believe that nuking a highly populated area three days later was the only choice we had... you are not thinking very hard.

And if you think anyone on the American side gave much of a damm about the Japs in Aug 1945, then YOU aren't thinking very hard...

Go read up on Iwo Jima:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner, some of whom were captured because they had been knocked unconscious or otherwise disabled.

There were over 100 million people in Japan in 1945, clearly a large number of them willing to fight to the death.

At some point, facing such people with such a believe system, the only way to get them to see sense is to hit them so unbelievably hard, that they accept a new reality.

Kinda like people on Slashdot who just won't listen to sense. :)

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[tinkerton]

There were more options that rarely get mention. There were options of agreeing on a less favorable peace agreement with Japan. In the end the reasoning remains that the US conquered Japan because it could. And that it feels justified because atomic bombs made it cheaper. What would the US have done had they had less power advantage? It has been shown since that the atomic bombs didn't even have the time to have a large influence on Japanese decision making and that it was the russian invasion that made them capitulate. The US may have thought (probably) that the nukes made Japan capitulate but it wasn't even the case.

But guilt is looking backwards. If you look at dangerous myths resulting from the war there is one that limited use of nukes is justified in some cases. This is becoming more relevant as the threshold for using nukes is dropping, especially the smaller 'pinpoint' types. A new type is being developed just for that purpose. But we still have a system in place that can destroy humanity on very short notice and the understanding of how to limit escalation of conflicts is laughable.

As far as I'm concerned if nukes were brought down to small numbers the main risk would be avoided. That looks like a good goal.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize the Japan killed 6-7 million people during WWII and were continuing to do so.

There were only 2 choices. They had to be stopped.

No it wasn't wrong to stop them. No it wasn't wrong the drop the bomb on them. Japanese atrocities were from Japanese aggression. US actions were for STOPPING JAPANESE AGGRESSION. One isn't justified. One is. By your account killing any nazis was a bad thing. Should have let them take over Europe.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[BadDreamer]

Let me say that again, the second bomb came just seventy-two hours later. In the age before satellites or the internet.

74 hours actually.

Do you think the Japanese government had any idea what the casualty count was?

Yes. They knew that within a few hours.

At that point in time, do you think that the majority of officers in their military and advisers to the emperor even fully appreciated what an atomic bomb was?

Yes. Japan had its own nuclear program. They knew very well what an atomic bomb was.

And they didn't care. It was not Hiroshima nor Nagasaki that made them surrender. In the summer of 1945 over 300000 Japanese were killed. The atomic bombings were just added on the pile. They were just bigger bombs.

For some background on this, since you take your arguments from wikipedia (as if they get anything about politics right), look here:

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/...

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[trout007]

Everyone is forgetting the Japanese were ready to surrender just not unconditionally. That was the sticking point. They had a few demands like leaving the emporer in place, which we did anyway.

Also we should't forget it was Lincoln that ended the centuries long tradition of only targeting military.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[jabuzz]

The decision was taken by the leaders in WWII than unlike in WWI the enemy (aka Nazi's and Japan) had to be utterly defeated. There was going to be no repeat of what I call the "Pershing Effect" that is unless they are utterly defeated they don't believe they really lost and you end up doing it all over again.

History had proved with Germany that a ceasefire and negotiated peace had been the biggest mistake of the 20th Century costing tens of millions of lives. They where not going to make that mistake again, unconditional surrender and occupation was the *ONLY* option on the table from the allies.

The nuclear bombing of Japan provided that total and utter defeat of Japan while risking the fewest possible allied lives, and bringing to an end the Japanese death toll across Asia in as short a time as possible.

The idea that the nuclear bombs didn't have an effect on the Japanese war cabinet is pure and total revisionist fantasy.

For starters it is in direct contravention of recorded testimony given by surviving members of the Japanese war cabinet after the war. There are TV documentaries with these interview in for the whole world to see. Neither you or any other person who was not in the Japanese war cabinet can argue with their testimony.

Even at the 11th hour there where attempts by factions of the Japanese military to stage a coup and stop the unconditional surrender.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[tehcyder]

And that attitude is why we lost in Vietnam... we weren't ruthless ENOUGH...

Yes, in the sense that you could have nuked the whole country into oblivion, I suppose you're right. The point is, you were supposed to be saving the country, and in the end enough of them chose communism that you would have had to kill most of the population to "win".

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[drinkypoo]

WWII was a good war even if we were clearly, at times, more ruthless than we had to be.

Who told you that? WWII happened due to an economic climate deliberately created in the aftermath of WWI, and the USA deliberately entered the war late in spite of having been informed about the holocaust because it was economically prudent; we just waited for everyone else to get stomped, and we became the industrial giants. There was nothing "good" about WWII, or our involvement therein, the timing of which was chosen to maximize profit. The plan would have worked even better sans Pearl Harbor, which makes that whole debale a bit amusing in retrospect. One wonders who tricked the Japanese into that faux pas.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time, every time this knee-jerk excuse comes out. As if we had exactly two options in the entire universe. Because if we didn't nuke them or immediately invade them then... what? They were poised to invade California?

Some of this was about revenge, as well.. and I don't have a problem with that. If you do, I truly hope you're on an NSA watch list under the entry 'pussy'. The Japanese surrender should have been immediate and post-haste. Exponential response is how you shut down the situation after being attacked.

You want revisionism? Try reading a Japanese textbook and see what's in there TODAY, asshole.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[jabuzz]

The allies wanted unconditional surrender because the history in the 20th century of conditional surrenders with aggressive nations (see WWI and Germany) had proven to be such catastrophic failures. There was no way on earth the same mistake was going to be made again.

It had nothing to do with wanting revenge, it was making sure that they understood they had been utterly defeated and that to ever risk it again would be stupid beyond belief.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[ScentCone]

Incorrect. They did 'quit'. Immediately.

Yes, other than the whole "not surrendering" part.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Talderas]

Between the expedition force in China and the Kwangtung Army the Japanese had well over 1,500,000 troops on mainland Asia prior to the Soviets declaring war on Japan.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Talderas]

Everyone is forgetting the Japanese were ready to surrender just not unconditionally. That was the sticking point. They had a few demands like leaving the emporer in place, which we did anyway.

That particular demand was one of the lesser ones that the Japanese were looking for. It was never going to happen because that demand would have made the Emperor immune to a trial for war crimes. The Emperor was kept in place because the US investigators couldn't find sufficient evidence that he was responsible for the war and couldn't find sufficient evidence to prosecute him for war crimes. The Emperor was also not unscathed. Japan wanted to keep the position of the Emperor as a living god. The Americans pressed and insisted that the Emperor renounce his divinity, something which Hirohito did because he never believed it himself. The Emperor also no longer has any governmental powers. Prior to that the Emperor had a varying influence depend on his own personality, Meiji had a lot more influence than Hirohito did but even Hirohito still had the power to appoint a prime minister for the government prior to Japan's surrender.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[BadDreamer]

The decision was taken by the leaders in WWII than unlike in WWI the enemy (aka Nazi's and Japan) had to be utterly defeated

That is completely and utterly false. The US and the UK were negotiating with Himmler for a conditional surrender, in order to gain territorial advantages over Russia. A Russian spy uncovered this, and damage control went into effect, and what you are regurgitating is the result of that damage control.

History had proved with Germany that a ceasefire and negotiated peace had been the biggest mistake of the 20th Century costing tens of millions of lives.

That is not at all what history had shown. The mistake was the insane peace policies, and the arbitrary carving up of Germany, which lead to a collapsed economy and bitter resentment in Germany. Those are the base causes of WWII, and while they came out of the peace negotiations, the problem is not that they were too lax.

The idea that the nuclear bombs didn't have an effect on the Japanese war cabinet is pure and total revisionist fantasy

They had absolutely no effect. The Tokyo firebombing had much more effect on Japan, killing more people, destroying much more property, and that didn't sway them a bit. They already had 86 destroyed cities, so two more does not change much. The War Cabinet didn't care at all about the atomic bombs. They made no difference.

For starters it is in direct contravention of recorded testimony given by surviving members of the Japanese war cabinet after the war.

What the nuclear bombs provided was an excellent excuse to surrender. Japan would prefer to be under the thumb of the US than under the thumb of Russia, and when Russia broke the peace treaty and attacked them, they were very quick to look for reasons to surrender to the US.

And that is what the atomic bombs provided. A convenient excuse. Nothing more.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[tinkerton]

I regard the version of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (http://japanfocus.org/site/view/2501) as more or less definitive. The bombs scared them, the Russians terrified them. The Russians were the main reason for the unconditional surrender. I'm convinced though that many in the US were sincerely convinced that the bombs caused the surrender. And as BadDreamer already remarked after WW1 the victors really punished the Germans hard and that was a major reason for WW2. While after WW2 we had Marshall.

The idea that nothing less than a complete destruction of the enemy will suffice is a pernicious myth.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[argStyopa]

And this is the same sort of pollyanna turd that ALSO floats to the surface whenever the conversation comes up.

I'm certain there was NO eagerness across the military to invade Japan. None. Have you read anything about Iwo Jima? Okinawa? The level of fanaticism displayed in their defense terrified US planners. It could only be imagined that Japan would be exponentially more-bitterly defended, brutal, and drawn-out affair.

And what's your alternative: we were going to beseige the island(s) of Japan? Do you *really* think that would have resulted in FEWER civilian casualties? The Japanese high command resisted surrendering after two of their cities had been vaporized. What makes you plausibly believe that Japan would have ever surrendered before their entire country had been pummeled into dust?

You also seem to conveniently forget that there *was* a time-imperative: Soviet involvement in the war. It was perceived in the West that the Soviets were grabbing literally ever hectare they could put under Soviet control before hostilities ended. The war needed to end NOW, before they had a chance to turn to really participate in the east. Ask Japan if they were better off outside the iron curtain than in; or maybe better, ask East Germany, Poland, or North Korea.

This is even setting aside the entirely-human desire to punish Japan for what was seen as a dirty way to start the fight. I don't blame Japan for trying to win however they could, but they had to have seen (indeed, Yamamoto very much foretold the consequences of the attack and subsequent war, based on his familiarity with Americans) that there would be a reckoning, if they didn't win.

I'm sure you've heard all the arguments against the "demonstration" and already dismissed them. That's irrational, because given the incomplete knowledge available to political leaders in summer 1945, they were credible: we didn't have many bombs, we couldn't even be certain that they would reliably work. Not to mention, you would of course not been faced with the job of explaining to thousands of American families who lost young men in the span of time while the war 'idled' between Aug 6 and whenever your "demonstration" would have allegedly convinced the Japanese to surrender. I don't believe it would have, frankly; it's not like Japan was an open-information consensual democracy.

It's very, very easy for someone sitting comfortably in their easy chair in 2015 to pass enlightened moral judgement on decisions made 70 years ago. Hindsight is 20/20. It's also complete bullshit.

And off topic, but to your final point: there IS no such thing as being 'overly ruthless' in war, particularly for the attacked. It's that sort of thinking - that war can be fought within boundaries - that allows dilettantes in Washington and other world capitals believe that they can control events and keep it 'humane' from which it's only a short step to 'plausible' to 'useful'. War is a fucking atrocity, full stop. Anyone who believes it can be otherwise is actually encouraging it.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Zontar The Mindless]

You hit the enemy with everything, 100% of the available force, hold nothing back, obliterate them...

It's quite easy to make grand-sounding statements like this. It also marks you as someone who should never be trusted with the command of any military unit, ever.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[k6mfw]

I think in general people not old enough to been in WWII need to put themselves in the mindset of 1945, this was total war. Any and all means were used to defeat the enemy. A-bombs were another weapon in the arsenal. Also back then the military effort was a Machine. A recent documentary described Truman didn't really give the go to drop the bomb, it was a process already in motion. Truman decided not to interrupt it.

What we didn't really know is there were some in Japanese govt that wanted to surrender but others that refused. I don't know much but there was a group that attacked the Emperor's castle to prevent him from giving a surrender speech. Emperor's guards were able to stop that attack. If they didn't, would more nuclear bombs be dropped?

War is bad, but we glorify it with movies, games, and provocative political speeches. Of course those that yell the loudest are not the ones that have to do the actual fighting.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

>There were options of agreeing on a less favorable peace agreement with Japan.

After Pearl Harbor? Not a snowballs chance in hell the American public would have accepted it.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

The Japanese were killing about 400,000 civilians a month. That's more than 10,000 every day.
The first bomb was dropped on August 6th.
The second bomb was dropped on August 9th, three days (and almost 40,000 civilian dead) later.
Japan finally surrendered on August 15th, another six days (and 70,000 dead civilians) later.

In other words, the time between the first bomb and the actual surrender was enough time for the Japanese to kill off more Chinese civilians that actually died due to the atomic bombs.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

For years, the US refused to bomb North Vietnamese cities. Only after Nixon lost it and sent the Air Force to perform a massive bombing campaign against Hanoi did the North Vietnamese actually take the situation seriously and agree to the Treaty of Paris that ended the (first) Vietnam War.

Had the US been willing to behave against North Vietnam in the 1960s like it did against Nazi Germany, the war would have ended much faster, with much less loss of life on both sides.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[richard.cs]

The other reason Nagasaki had fewer casualties was that the bomb didn't ignite a firestorm. There were still fires of course, but not the kind of raging inferno that creates it's own tornado to feed itself. This is despite the higher yield of the second bomb.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

The main purpose of the Nagasaki bomb (other than the military effects, which were considerable) was to let the Japanese know that we could and would destroy Japanese cities if they didn't surrender. In hindsight, this was probably a good move. (Truman did put a hold on the third bomb to be used against Japan.)

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

We were also losing ships to Japanese attacks. Had the war continued to November, we'd have lost a lot of ships even if the invasion didn't take place.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

The blockade would have killed far more civilians. My best estimate is that another month or two would have killed more Chinese civilians under Japanese occupation than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki together, and that wasn't the only heavily populated place the Japanese occupied. Moreover, far more Japanese would have died before the Japanese leadership was ready to surrender.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

A better paraphrase of the response would be, "Read the terms we offered, guys, they clearly say that the Japanese people get to decide on that after the war."

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

Really? We know that Truman had seen a document predicting half a million to a million US deaths in the invasion. This was almost certainly far too many (it might have been correct for total dead and wounded), but it does show Truman knew that lots of US servicemen might die if he didn't end the war first.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

I take it that you are unfamiliar with Clausewitz' "On War", one of the greatest military classics ever, since that's about the first point he makes. (He does back off as regards practice.)

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

I haven't heard of negotiating for a conditional surrender. At the end of the war, Himmler did take de facto control of part of Germany and tried to negotiate with the West, but Hitler put a stop to that. It's entirely likely that Hitler's subordinates would have tried to negotiate, since they seemed absolutely blind to what the Allies thought about what they'd done, but I don't see how one of them could have delivered on that. Could you give a source?

After WWI, Germany was not carved up arbitrarily. The Alsace-Lorraine region Germany had taken from France in 1871 was returned, and primarily Polish lands in the East were incorporated into Poland. It's worth noting that Germany ended the war in considerably better shape than France, which had had more per capita combat losses, and had many of its industrialized areas the victim of static trench warfare for years. The French did try to collect on reparations, and the Weimar Republic trashed Germany's economy in an attempt to stop them. The bitter resentment was largely a result of right-wing propaganda, starting with the "stab-in-the-back" lies to cover up the fact that the German High Command lost the war fair and square.

If the nukes were just a way to save face, they served an extremely useful purpose. In the Imperial Rescript announcing surrender, the Emperor did mention a "new and most cruel bomb", but such things as the destruction of the Japanese Navy and the economy, the Soviet attack in Manchuria, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, and the fact that Japan could not defend her extended borders from Allied attack were developments "not necessarily to Japan's advantage".

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

The US entered the war later for several reasons.

First, the US just wasn't ready for a fight. The first offensive action against Germany (that I know of) was a bombing raid in July 1942 using a few US-made light bombers that the USAAF borrowed from the RAF. US ground forces didn't engage Germans for something like a year after the declaration, and showed that they weren't really ready for it. I've seen good arguments that the US entry into the war actually hurt the Allies for a while, since a lot of materiel that would have gone to troops already fighting the Axis had to be kept back to build up the US Army and Army Air Force.

Second, while Churchill was always greatly in favor of US entry, his predecessor (Chamberlain) had said on at least a few occasions that he'd prefer to keep the US out of the fight, since Chamberlain correctly figured the US was not interested in preserving the British Empire, and he feared too much US influence in European and Imperial affairs. Churchill took over in March 1940, and the US started waging war in September 1941 (when the Navy got orders to fully engage the Germans in the Atlantic), which, given US lack of preparedness, wasn't all that that long.

I've seen no evidence that anybody "tricked" the Japanese into the Pearl Harbor attack. Churchill welcomed it, and Roosevelt would have preferred not to be distracted by the Japanese.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[BadDreamer]

Yes, Hitler (and Allied media) put a stop to that, but not until after the Soviets had found out about it. The book and series "17 moments of spring" are based around the events. I have only read translated history books here and there, and seen the television series as my Russian is highly inadequate. That is the best leads I can provide, as I do not have the books anymore.

And yes, the carving up after WWI was, to Germany's eyes, arbitrary. They made a "bridge" of land through Germany, fercrissakes. It was petty beyond belief. And every part of Germany was once part of something else. You also downplay the state of the German economy between the wars. It fell through the floor. The terms negotiated were grotesque towards the Germans.

And indeed, the nukes served a useful political purpose. But their military effect was pretty much zero.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

It's quite easy to make grand-sounding statements like this. It also marks you as someone who should never be trusted with the command of any military unit, ever.

Ahh, so you have never heard of General George S. Patton then?

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

The reason Vietnam lasted for nearly a decade, longer than WWII, is we had politicians trying what you're describing... "limited war, don't kill the enemy too much, try to avoid killing too many civilians, don't carpet bomb cities, hit this target, but that one is off limits".

It is a bunch of crap. Look at the 1st Gulf War. We hit the Iraqi military with everything we had, the ground war lasted less than 100 hours as a result, we were slaughtering them and they gave up en mass.

Desert Storm is a text book example of how to fight a war. It is one of the most lopsided military victories in history and if done right, is irresistible.

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/h...

"In August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait. Five short months later, a powerful coalition led by the United States would launch Operation Desert Storm, one of the most rapid, decisive, and bloodless victories of all time. In just over four days of combat, the Coalition would liberate Kuwait, demolish the Iraqi army, and take hordes of Iraqi prisoners, all at a minimal cost in casualties. Iraqi losses in the course of this brief âoe100-hours warâ were massiveâ"some 20,000 killed and 60,000 wounded or captured. US forces, by contrast, suffered just 148 battle deaths, alongside another ninety-nine suffered by their coalition partners, one of the most lopsided results in military history."

In just under 100 hours of ground fighting, we crushed the enemy, we hit them with everything, and they surrendered. What YOU propose is a crime, because it will cause wars to go on for years. Like they are today.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[trout007]

And that was worth 200k innocent lives.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

Correction: The British Empire had liberated most of Burma by the surrender, and were preparing to attack into Malaya. I believe they'd also liberated part of Borneo.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[david_thornley]

I started reading Hasegawa's book, but when I read the page that said that Secretary of State Byrne deliberately created unacceptable surrender terms because he wanted peace, my brain seized up. By then, it was very obvious that he wanted to blame everything he could on the US, with or without evidence. Got another source that's a little more objective?

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

For years, the US refused to bomb North Vietnamese cities. Only after Nixon lost it and sent the Air Force to perform a massive bombing campaign against Hanoi did the North Vietnamese actually take the situation seriously and agree to the Treaty of Paris that ended the (first) Vietnam War.

Had the US been willing to behave against North Vietnam in the 1960s like it did against Nazi Germany, the war would have ended much faster, with much less loss of life on both sides.

^ This is the correct answer...

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's quite easy to make grand-sounding statements like this. It also marks you as someone who should never be trusted with the command of any military unit, ever.

Ahh, so you have never heard of General George S. Patton then?

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Exactly. You expend the minimum amount of force needed to obtain your objective. You conserve your resources whilst forcing your opponent to expend his. *This* is how wars are won, not by going all gung-ho.

As for Vietnam, the reasons the US did not achieve its objective there is simple: It did not *have* a clear objective, and ended up fighting a protracted holding action to preserve a corrupt and inept régime that otherwise would probably have collapsed on its own eventually, even without being helped out of power by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong.

The really senseless thing about Vietnam is that Ho Chi Minh wanted to be a US ally, and we told him to go fuck himself.

And you might call that thing that went on for ~100 hours a "battle", but I have another word for anything with a result that lopsided: "massacre". You do realise that by destroying the Iraqi Army in that fashion, the US virtually guaranteed that the country would fall into the chaos into which it has indeed fallen, don't you?

As Heinlein said, spanking a baby with an axe is neither nice nor warranted.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

And you might call that thing that went on for ~100 hours a "battle", but I have another word for anything with a result that lopsided: "massacre". You do realise that by destroying the Iraqi Army in that fashion, the US virtually guaranteed that the country would fall into the chaos into which it has indeed fallen, don't you?

You have your wars mixed up... That 100 hour battle was in 1991, Gulf War 1...

The current mess is a result of the invasion more than 10 years later, Gulf War 2...

And as far as what you call it, if a war is done right, it is indeed a massacre, of the other side... Why in the world would you want a bunch of dead people on OUR side?

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[FlyHelicopters]

Exactly. You expend the minimum amount of force needed to obtain your objective. You conserve your resources whilst forcing your opponent to expend his. *This* is how wars are won, not by going all gung-ho.

Lord... THAT is what you hear when you read those words?

No wonder you're so messed up... You clearly don't know much about Patton...

Study the man, his methods... Crushing the enemy is the quickest way to win, and he did it multiple times, even when his own leaders thought it was impossible.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[AmiMoJo]

No, the exact opposite is true. After WWI Germany was totally defeated and forced to pay crippling reparations, and have only a minimal military. After WWII a determined effort to make West Germany a viable, successful country, self governed and not feeling defeated and downtrodden was made.

Same with Japan. Total defeat would have been a disaster. That's one reason that the emperor was allowed to continue, for example.

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

WWII happened due to an economic climate deliberately created in the aftermath of WWI

Hitler's rise to power owed as much to world-wide depression as anything else. There were lots of non-economic factors leading to WW2 as well. Given the sociopathic nature of Germany's leaders (most politicians are sociopaths, that's not something unique to Germany, but they had a particularly bad group), war was probably inevitable irregardless of economic factors. Further, Europe has a long history of warfare, we don't need conspiracy theories to account for yet another war in a long series.

the USA deliberately entered the war late in spite of having been informed about the holocaust because it was economically prudent

Not at all true. Here's the history: people in the USA were outraged after WWI, as a result of war profiteering. In that war the US involvement was largely caused by the desire of the super-rich to get even richer by selling arms to Britain. The British had been foolish enough to jump into a war they had no business being in, without the means to fight it, which made them desperate to buy munitions, leading to a very profitable trade. The Germans, responding to the British blockade of Germany, attempted a blockage of their own with their u-boats to stop this traffic. The US super-rich responded by pressuring the US government to do something about the u-boats, which eventually pushed the US into war. All the while, the super-rich were making obscene profits selling arms.

After the war, most people in the USA were really pissed off when they finally figured out what had been going on, and that so many of their children had been killed or maimed as a consequence of the top 1% trying to get even richer (the USA really had no legitimate reason to be involved in WWI). This outrage fueled an isolationist movement that was enormously powerful and was able to keep the USA out of WW2 for a long time.

To these people, the Holocaust was irrelevant: after all, Europeans had been killing each other in job lots for millennia. Many in the USA had no desire to be the world's policemen and to get their children killed fighting in somebody else's wars. George Washington had advised Americans to avoid foreign entanglements, and they saw isolationism as a way of following that advice. There are plenty of people in the USA who feel the same way today.

As a result of all this, USA was unable to enter WWII officially until it was actually attacked (the navy was unofficially involved fighting German u-boats for months before Pearl Harbor).

Think of this as democracy in action.

; we just waited for everyone else to get stomped, and we became the industrial giants

The USA was already the industrial giant before the war started. The USA and industry from many countries on the continent (including Germany) had been out-competing Britain in many areas for years before the war started.

Britain was stuck with an educational system run by the church, one that produced a few outstanding scientists and engineers but not nearly enough, and with many Victorian age industrial facilities. They could produce high technology, even superb examples of such, but not in large enough quantities to make up for the attrition of war. For example, a lot of the parts in the famous British aircraft that won the Battle of Britain (Hurricane and Spitfire) were made overseas.

These weaknesses in Britian's industrial potential were identified as early as WWI, but nothing was done to fix them. See The Audit of War (Corelli Barnett).

The USA, producing far more engineers and scientists from its schools, and with newer facilities (and with managers that had a habit of aggressively upgrading their facilities, unlike their British counterparts), was in a far superior industrial position long before the war started.

In effect, the engine of British industry was running on the residues of Britian's co

Re:False dichotomy of the guilty conscience

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time, every time this knee-jerk excuse comes out. As if we had exactly two options in the entire universe. Because if we didn't nuke them or immediately invade them then... what? They were poised to invade California?

Every day the war continued, people were being killed or crippled. They were being killed in battle, they were being killed doing dangerous jobs making or transporting war supplies, they were being killed in training, they were being killed in atrocities committed by the Japanese. Some of these people wore uniforms, many did not, but all were somebody's child.

The Allied military leaders had an obligation to end the war as quickly as possible, to stop the carnage. This is called responsibility, something you don't seem to have much experience with. Maybe during the next war we'll let you be the person that gets to individually notify all the next of kin of the loss of their loved ones. The experience might help you understand the issues here.

Despite all the propaganda to the contrary, the reality is there was a deadlock among the Japanese leaders, and there was no surrender in the works. There are a lot of people cherry picking facts, and a lot of distortion, with the intent of creating an impression to the contrary, but once one looks at the details this becomes quite obvious. The former prime minister of Japan came out and admitted both bombs were necessary, not that many years ago (an act of great moral courage that destroyed his political career).

Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets, Hiroshima due to the large military presence, Nagasaki due to its role as a transportation hub and industrial center producing war equipment.

The Japanese had plenty of time to evacuate non-combatants not involved in the war effort from these obvious targets. Their military, unlike you, understood that stopping ammunition from being produced is just as important to modern war as killing enemy soldiers. Soldiers without bullets, after all, are not much of a threat.

As the saying goes, amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics, including manufacturing and transportation.

It is far more efficient to stop the bullets from being produced than to kill the soldiers once they have those bullets. Transportation hubs, ports, industrial centers: these are the targets one goes after to stop the industrial processes that produce war equipment. This keeps ones own people alive. It means the leaders of a nation have fewer parents in that nation whose children will never come home.

The Japanese leaders fully understood that these locations were strategic military targets. They themselves had picked similar targets in their conquests. They had a responsibility to take appropriate steps to minimize casualties among those not directly involved in the war effort. Their failure to do so, after years of opportunity, greatly increased the casualty count.

The decision to drop two bombs in rapid sequence was consciously made to try to push the Japanese surrender into happening promptly. It was the right decision, and it saved huge numbers of lives. Had a Soviet invasion been allowed to happen, the combat casualties alone (by this I include civilian and military casualties: look at the civilian casualties from the battle for Okinawa!) would have dwarfed the losses for both atomic bombs, and the post-war deaths would have been worse. Stalin is, after all, the biggest mass murderer in history, and the Japanese would have been under his control. That invasion would have happened without a Japanese surrender consistent with the agreements between the Allies, something the Japanese were unwilling to do until the bombs were dropped.

Murray Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal

[Taco Cowboy]

Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either

Mr. Peshkin is not a war criminal. America's entrance into World War II ended up saving more lives than had it chosen not to get involved

The war criminals were and are the Japanese, the Germans, the Italians, and those who gave support to them

America's dropping bombs on Japan was not without justifications - it was the japs who attacked the Pearl Harbor first, and the japs were also attacking and invading other countries, from Korea to the North to the strings of pacific islands to the South, and all the way to Burma to the West

Along the way the japs committed atrocities that were so horrible not even the Islamic Terrorists of today could hope to match.

Furthermore, Japan as the aggressor country not only refusing to officially apologize for the crimes they and their ancestors have committed to other people, many of them, including the current Japanese Prime Minister, Shinto Abe, are doing everything they can to whitewash the barbaric acts that their fathers/grandfathers had done.

Before the japanese apologists launch their ad hominem attacks on me, let me include some links to photos documenting the atrocities that were carried out, by none other than the japs -

http://www.documentingreality....

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...

http://www.documentingreality....

No, Mr. Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal!

Thanks to Peshkin and the team which built the bombs, the two bombs that were dropped in Japan successfully halted the japs from perpetrating even more heinous massacres, illustrated by the photos above

We must be fully aware of the scams the japs are busy doing today - maximizing the effect of their 'victim card' while denying everything (and refusing to apologize for) the crimes they did to others

Re:Murray Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal

[thinkwaitfast]

No one should have to apologize for their ancestors. It's meaningless at best.

Re:Murray Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal

[Anonymous Coward]

To you, whitewashing the crimes of their ancestors is also permissible?

Re:Murray Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal

[tehcyder]

No one should have to apologize for their ancestors. It's meaningless at best.

There's a difference between ancestors from hundreds of years ago and your grandparents' generation.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

Also bear in mind that the vast majority of the stored bombs are disassembled (the pieces are physically separated on special racks deep under ground) and they do not have triggers, because the triggers have a very short half life. Making triggers take some time. So a country that may have a large number of bomb parts (the parts with 25000 year half life), may only have a few that are ready for use (because the triggers have a two week half life).

A most successful betrayal

[AHuxley]

Re " It was the product of billions of dollars in government spending, hundreds of the world’s top scientists working in concert, in secret, in a city built from scratch in the desert, and a bygone patriotism united by common, Manichean cause: stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese.""
Japan was defeated, seeking a way to surrender into 1945 and the US had a 2 versions of a new weapon to test on undamaged, populated cities.
The "experiment" part was to find two cities that still remained intact in Japan.
The US "patriotism" was a cover to stop a re emerging France and the helpful UK from placing conditions or laws on US mil and civilian nuclear expansion after 1945.
The US did not want to have to share any control with the UK or be forced to pay some France patent for early nuclear work.
The UK wanted to offer a lot of tech to the US but for that early deal wanted equal say in nuclear use, policy and profits after the war.
The only secret was how the UK was cut of out late design work and had to race to secure its own methods, experts and designs before the US removed UK top staffs clearances.
Thankfully the UK had Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... who was able to secure the UK manufacture, design and raw materials away from the US just in time.
The UK had its MAUD Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... later used the Tube Alloys codename https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... and with Canadian help was able to break free of US nuclear restrictions.
Churchill's Bomb: A Hidden History of Science, War and Politics (Friday 20 September 2013)
http://www.theguardian.com/boo...
The main lesson the UK, Canada, Australia and France learned was that the US would take their early nuclear work and ideas but it was a one way deal.

Re:A most successful betrayal

[david_thornley]

If you'd like to present evidence that the Japanese Liaison Council was agreeing on anything more or less like an acceptable surrender, please do. I haven't seen any.

We need more Manhattan projects

[m.alessandrini]

I wish the same effort of the Manhattan project or the moon race was replicated for things like a cure for some cancers, or clean energy, or food, and all the other things we desperately need. And it doesn't have to be a single country effort.

Re:We need more Manhattan projects

[thinkwaitfast]

The nuclear bomb cost about $25billion (inflation adjusted) dollars. The majority of that went into facilities construction (housing for the workers). Just the US NIH yearly budget is $30B. Cancer research from the US alone is ~$5billion/year. Diseases are more difficult than engineering problems. http://report.nih.gov/categori...

Re:We need more Manhattan projects

[quenda]

The nuclear bomb cost about $25billion (inflation adjusted) dollars.

You can treble that as a percentage of GDP. And it was a big risk at a time of war, which did not pay off.
In hindsight, most of the money could have better been spent on conventional armaments. By the time it was ready, Germany had surrendered and Japan was defeated. Hiroshima could have been levelled by conventional weapons, like most other Japanese cities were. But by that time, Manhattan was a sunk cost.
Even if it only shortened the war by a few weeks, that means many thousands of POW and civilian lives saved. How could they not use it?

Re:We need more Manhattan projects

[serviscope_minor]

or food

Thatalready happened:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and as a result the productivity of farming increased massively.

Re:We need more Manhattan projects

[rbrandis]

There are: the War on Cancer "National Cancer Act of 1971 by then U.S. President Richard Nixon is generally viewed as the beginning of the war on cancer, though it was not described as a "war" in the legislation itself", War on Drugs "War on Drugs is an American term commonly applied to a campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade"

Re:We need more Manhattan projects

[Anonymous Coward]

The Manhattan Project and moon landing project weren't successful because of the funding that they were allocated, but because of the tight focus of the projects and the well-defined goals.

The NIH budget may be bigger than the budget for the bomb, but the focus of the funded projects is extremely diffuse.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan was also working on a nuclear bomb and there is some evidence that their Navy successfully tested one, before the USA did. So they thought they could possibly win the war. They knew how hard is was to make a nuclear device and did not believe that the US had more than one.

The 'nuclear race' was real. The USA ultimately won the race by fire bombing their research institutions and investing much more money and resources than everyone else combined. It was a truly desperate time. The US threw everything they had at Japan, not out of love for China or Korea, but just to stop them and only barely succeeded.

Dad's army.

[TapeCutter]

Seriously? You're arguing the Japanese version of Dad's Army were non-civilians? With a straight face and links?

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[Ihlosi]

Nuclear weapons have probably been the best thing ever invented for bringing relative peace to the world.

Every time they get used, there's even a chance of them bringing absolute peace to the world, for a few million years at least.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[Ihlosi]

there is some evidence that their Navy successfully tested one, before the USA did.

You can't hide nuclear tests all that well. Where and when should this test have taken place?

wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[foreverdisillusioned]

I am not ignorant, although it appears that Wikipedia may be incomplete on this point.

I don't have the sources in front of me, but there were multiple Japanese attempts at surrender negotiations before the second bomb was dropped. As I recall, the later ones dropped all of the other conditions--they only wanted their emperor preserved.

But I don't have the primary sources handy so--for the sake of argument--let me just concede that as well. Let's say Japan wanted territorial integrity and a bunch of other stuff as well. Do you still think that bombing them again three days later was the only way? Backed-into-a-corner, the American war machine literally had no other options whatsoever? I would suggest that, at minimum, one option would have been to give the Japanese government a little more time to investigate the bombing and educate their leaders and advisers about it. Three days is an incredibly short amount of time, especially pre-satellite, pre-internet and with fog of war chaos everywhere.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[BadDreamer]

Of course it wasn't the only way. There were lots of ways available. Like killing a lot more people than the atomic bombs did by firebombing Tokyo some more.

In WWII, and for quite a few years afterwards, nuclear weapons were nothing but bigger bombs. It's only in hindsight that they show up as the monstrous weapons they are. The decision to bomb Nagasaki was no different than the decision to send bombers over the Ruhr area on the night of July 22 1943.

All this is completely forgotten today. We (and by we I mean you) argue as if the decision makers back then knew what we know today about nuclear weapons, and as if they knew that Japan would surrender.

Japan's surrender was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time. And in fact, the last Japanese soldier did not cease fighting until 1974. That kind of resolve was not unique. Japan was not about to give in just because things looked a little bleak. US forces burned down Tokyo, and that did not make Japan surrender. How on earth would blowing up a bomb in a desert or on a mountain make Japan surrender?

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[AmiMoJo]

Japan's surrender was by no means a foregone conclusion at the time.

Are you suggesting that unless the conclusion is guaranteed it justifies ignoring all the other options that would have killed far fewer people?

As for your example of the last soldier fighting on until 1974, that was very much a unique situation. If it were otherwise then why didn't more of the Japanese military carry on even after surrendering? It was a communication problem, it doesn't justify the use of atomic weapons.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[Talderas]

The Allies did not know how big or small a role the Emperor had played with regard to Japan's aggression. That one condition was not one that would have ever been granted.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not ignorant, although it appears that Wikipedia may be incomplete on this point.

Yes, yes you are.

I have a university education and the first thing I do is look for authoritative sources on the material, not some hacked-together amateur bullshit that you yourself agrees is incomplete.

Sit down, son. You're embarrassing yourself.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[BadDreamer]

Are you suggesting that unless the conclusion is guaranteed it justifies ignoring all the other options that would have killed far fewer people?

I am stating - not suggesting - that all options were tried, including bombing 86 Japanese cities to rubble, and including using two atomic bombs. None of that worked, I might add.

The two atomic bombs were peanuts in the bombing campaign. They didn't even make it to the top of the death count. And they did not sway the Japanese into surrendering.

As for your example of the last soldier fighting on until 1974, that was very much a unique situation. If it were otherwise then why didn't more of the Japanese military carry on even after surrendering?

Lots did.

It was a communication problem, it doesn't justify the use of atomic weapons.

You say "atomic weapons" as if that carries any form of special significance. It doesn't. Dead from boiled in a Tokyo canal during firebombing or dead from a blast wave in Nagasaki is still dead. Where is your outrage over the Tokyo firebombings?

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[Ihlosi]

That one condition was not one that would have ever been granted.

And yet, the Allies did everything to deflect blame away from the Emperor and on his subordinates instead when the trial happened, despite being easly able to pin plenty of crimes on him.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting that unless the conclusion is guaranteed it justifies ignoring all the other options that would have killed far fewer people?

Not even close. Learn to read.

Re:wikipedia seems incomplete on this point

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say Japan wanted territorial integrity and a bunch of other stuff as well.

Let's say the Allies didn't want to give them that - and why would they? What then?

You either surrender or you don't. End of.

Book of numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

> There are still nine nuclear nations that, between them, have stockpiled 16,300 weapons.

Nine may be right, but 16300 seems low. Anything under 19,000 is delusional or doesn't include nukes declaredly stored in a totally disassembled state.

USA ~6500

USSR ~7000 (Their start was partly espionage based, but significance of soviet in-house effort is much underestimated in the west. They had many scientific geniuses and very tiger-ish organizers/managers among their ranks and got practicable H-bomb even before USA.)

Britain ~400-500 (Partly with US help, partly in-house developed)

France ~350-400 (In-house developed A and H bombs after being denied US tech. Quite impressive for a country which, at the time, wasn't much industrialized and especially lagged in heavy industries.)

China ~700 (Got soviet fission bomb blueprints before the two countries fell apart.)

India ~110 (First explosion in the mid-1970 as the Smiling Buddha civilian earthworks project. Abandoned for 20 years due to intl' outcry, then restarted as military nukes project)

Pakistan ~70 (Actual souvereign capability doubted because USA somehow maintans a degree of control over those devices, or at least publicly claimed to be able to take physical control of them via spec-ops missions, if needed in case of an islamist coup.)

Zionist entity ~220-400 (large, but uncertain numbers due to US coverup and no one but Mordechai Vanunu dared to talk about them)

North Korea ~9-12 (primitive nukes with unreliable yields, designed and built without computers after to an unsuccessful US cyber attack, but anyhow they can explode and that's what matters)

Dishonourable mentions:

Apartheid South Africa - received fission bombs from the zionist entity in exchange for 550 tons of yellow unranium ore and hosting the zionist neutron bomb test in the Vela incident. Cuban troop landing prevented nuking of Angola. All the 6+1 nukes were dismantled and exfiltrated to the USA as the apartheid regime fell.

Kazakhstan - inherited several hundred nukes from the fall apart of USSR. Gave them up all in exchange for security guarantee as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Now they are on russian leash and licking Putin's feet to survive as useful minions, becasue the treaty ain't worth its pulp paper. (Cue the Ukraine below!)

Ukraine - inherited ~2500 nukes from the fall apart of USSR. Gave them up all in exchange for security guarantee as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Treaty was violated in 2014 by russian invasion, Ukraine is now being partitioned and the treaty patrons USA, UK, France, China do nothing.

Morale of the story: if your nation wants to live, obtain nukes and never give them up, no matter what. Eminent pupil of the lesson: North Korea. Dunces: Iraq, Libya, Syria (this one gave up chem WMD rather than nukes, but same logic). What happened to those donkeys? They got slaughtered to make sausages. Next dunce: Iran, as they just gave up 90% completed nukes in exchange for a piece of stamped paper with, which they can't even cleanse their posteriors, because muslims use water for that purpose. Soon they will be bombed back to stone ages by Tel-Aviv.

Re:Book of numbers

[gerddie]

Ukraine - inherited ~2500 nukes from the fall apart of USSR.

You might add that they never actually had command control over these nukes, i.e. at the time when they gave them up, they were just nuclear waste to Ukraine. And they were destroyed.

Treaty was violated in 2014 by russian invasion, [...]

Which invasion? If Russia were indeed to invade the Ukraine then it would take them probably no more than three days to finish the operation.

Ukraine is now being partitioned and the treaty patrons USA, UK, France, China do nothing.

Oh, the USA has done quite something, as we learnt from a leaked phone call.

Re:Book of numbers

[tehcyder]

Next dunce: Iran, as they just gave up 90% completed nukes in exchange for a piece of stamped paper with, which they can't even cleanse their posteriors, because muslims use water for that purpose. Soon they will be bombed back to stone ages by Tel-Aviv.

Bullshit. The Israelis have had the theoretical capability to nuke Iran for quite a long time. If they were going to do it, they would have done by now, before Iran actually had its own nukes to retaliate.

Re:Book of numbers

[MagickalMyst]

"If they were going to do it, they would have done by now"

I disagree. The Zionists are smarter than that. They will wait until Iran has nuclear capability so they can justify a pre-emptive strike or launch a false-flag attack and gain sympathy and support from the rest of the world.

Nuking Iran before they have any nuclear weapons would make the Zionists appear as the aggressors and instigators.

Re:Book of numbers

[alantus]

Next dunce: Iran, as they just gave up 90% completed nukes in exchange for a piece of stamped paper with, which they can't even cleanse their posteriors, because muslims use water for that purpose. Soon they will be bombed back to stone ages by Tel-Aviv.

First of all, the capital of Israel is Jerusalem, not Tel-Aviv.

Israel could have nuked Iran a long time ago already, but they opted for a less deadly alternative, the Stuxnet virus. The problem is that Stuxnet, just like the recently signed deal, can only delay the bomb, not prevent it.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people, that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.

Actually, the logic in favor of nuclear disarmament usually goes the other way: that a major war is inevitable - but if we can keep the stockpiles small enough then there's a chance that human civilization won't get entirely wiped out on the first day of the war - and that some kind of peace can then be negotiated while some small remnant of human civilization still exists.

It's the people who hold out the hope that world leaders are fundamentally rational who believe in large nuclear stockpiles - that such stockpiles will be an adequate deterrent to prevent a major war from ever happening again.

But the false dichotomy is still there

[foreverdisillusioned]

I'm pretty skeptical of those numbers (I'm also skeptical that the Japanese disengagement happened as fast as you imply), but I'll concede all of that for the moment--this is still a false dichotomy. You're still begin from the conclusion "the second bombing was justified, because otherwise X" and working your way backwards. It's simply not intellectually honest.

Think about it for five seconds and see if you can come up with an alternative that doesn't vaporize 40,000 civilians. Here's one: let's say we drop the second bomb on top of Mount Fuji. Just to bluff and say "hey look, we've got so many of these damn things we can waste 'em, just to give you a show." I do believe that would have made our point pretty clear. Nuking another major civilian population 3 days later is simply not necessary by any stretch of the imagination, even if we concede all kinds of stuff up front.

(I hope I don't have to reiterate disclaimers into every post: yes, I understand it was a different time with different rules and a far different enemy than anything we've faced recently. The point isn't to beat ourselves up about it; the point is simply to have the moral and mental clarity to call a spade a spade.)

Re:But the false dichotomy is still there

[Talderas]

The bomb dropped on Hiroshima did, in fact, result in an outcome that had effectively neutered the command and support structure for one of the two armies charged with defending Japan's mainland. General Hata, who commanded that army, had indicated that his troops were demoralized and were not going to be an effective defense force after the Hiroshima bomb. That was one of the arguments that helped sway Japan towards accepting unconditional surrender.

Re:But the false dichotomy is still there

[Anonymous Coward]

War is shit. You will never in the history of or future of humanity have a "clean" war fought perfectly like gentlemen should with no events that in hindsight or even in a relative view of the time are not controversial. If Japan didn't want to be on the receiving end of bad war policy decisions (such as dropping the bomb), maybe it shouldn't have been an aggressor nation, need I remind you that Japan was slaughtering the Chinese and the Koreans left and right. Welcome to total war, might makes right and victors write history. I hope we never have to witness another total war as the atrocities in the next one will make WW2 seem like a minor disagreement.

Re:But the false dichotomy is still there

[david_thornley]

Alternately, the Mount Fuji bomb convinces the hardliners that the US lacked the balls to use nukes on more cities, and they hold out until the US nukes another few cities. We're speculating here.

Re:But the false dichotomy is still there

[SillyHamster]

Think about it for five seconds and see if you can come up with an alternative that doesn't vaporize 40,000 civilians. Here's one: let's say we drop the second bomb on top of Mount Fuji. Just to bluff and say "hey look, we've got so many of these damn things we can waste 'em, just to give you a show." I do believe that would have made our point pretty clear. Nuking another major civilian population 3 days later is simply not necessary by any stretch of the imagination, even if we concede all kinds of stuff up front.

Your 5 seconds of imagination doesn't even require 5 seconds to rebuff.

nope

[Anonymous Coward]

we don't NEED another Manhattan technological solution - there's plenty of water, food, power and medicine for everyone already
what we do need is a Manhattan-level reorganisational solution - reduce inequalities, eliminate profligate waste, distribute intelligently.

but those with the beans don't want to give 'em up easily, regardless of how they came about getting them beans
and the Citizen decision has fucked us all sideways, because our voices have been muted to the extreme, disenfranchised by the almighty corrupting influence of corporate lobbyism

MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[Anonymous Coward]

The list of military leaders who thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary if not outright barbaric is quite long.

Some choice quotes from that link which itself is a summary of a much more thorough analysis.

"[T]he 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..."
-- Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff

"The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan..."
-- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet

"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..."
--- President Dwight D. Eisenhower (then General Eisenhower)

"The war might have ended weeks earlier, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
-- General Douglas MacArthur

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[david_thornley]

I don't trust Leahy's opinion on the nukes. He'd previously argued that they couldn't possibly work, and I suspect that flavored his statements. Nimitz was actually correct in that quote, as the nukes did little that continued firebombing couldn't, but they do seem to have gotten the Japanese to surrender (a diplomatic effect). MacArthur was, as far as I can tell with 20/20 hindsight, dead wrong (and the US had pointed out before the nukes that the Japanese people could indeed keep the institution of the Emperor). I also intensely distrust the Strategic Bombing Survey conclusions on when Japan would have surrendered (not to mention that their expected delay would have killed more civilians than the nukes did).

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[Anonymous Coward]

Japan's assault against the US was not the same as being able to prevent military aggression. They still had ample ability to strike and abuse the greater asian continent. The bombings were one of many plans (including dropping incendiary devices strapped to bats and others) to overtake the military presence on the japanese mainland to stop their advances, once and for all. Again, this idea that they were defeated is a bit out of context and shows a wrongly short-sighted US-centric viewpoint.

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[JeffOwl]

The conditions that were eventually applied to keeping the emperor were more restrictive than previously expected. He remained as a figurehead with little power.

The Emperor referred specifically to the atomic bombs, stating if they continued to fight it would result in "...an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation..."

One of Emperor Hirohito's closest advisers, stated, "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war"

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[shutdown -p now]

There is an argument that the Emperor referred to the bombs because it allowed him (and, by extension, the entire nation) to save face while surrendering, as opposed to a conventional defeat which they were facing otherwise. Thing is, we'll never really know. Quote mining on this subject doesn't really get you far because there are also quotes indicating that it was the Soviet threat that was the final straw, rather than the bomb, e.g. from Suzuki (emphasis mine):

"If we miss the chance today, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea and Sakhalin, but also Hokkaido. We must end the war while we can deal with the United States."

"The atomic bomb provided an additional reason for surrender as well as an extremely favorable opportunity to commence peace talks.”

"I was finally convinced that the moment had at last arrived to end the war, since what we had been afraid of and tried to avoid at any cost had finally come about, in view of the urgency of the situation, I finally made up my mind to be in charge of the termination of the war, taking all the responsibility upon myself." (from his autobiography, upon hearing of the Soviet invasion)

Also, the fact that the emergency council meeting (on which the surrender was decided) was hastily summoned immediately in response to the invasion, but not to the Hiroshima bombing, is also interesting.

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[k6mfw]

In the movie about MacArthur (portrayed by Gregory Peck), after reading the message about the Bomb, "months of planning [on invasion of Japan mainland] all for nothing on this.. this.. apparatus!" An aide asked the general, "What if it doesn't work?" MacArthur replied, "what if it does?"

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[JeffOwl]

I agree about the quote mining. I was, probably too hastily, trying to illustrate that point to the AC above.

Re:MacArthur, Nimitz, Eisenhower, etc All Opposed

[Anonymous Coward]

The list of military leaders who thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary if not outright barbaric is quite long.

You are very credulous. As you get more experience with life, your critical reading and thinking skills will probably get a lot better.

I'll help you out this one time.

The indicated list is actually quite short. The military leaders listed do not even make up 1% of the total number of Allied military leaders. This means, in social science terms, we don't have a representative sample.

Also, some of the quotes given on the web page aren't necessarily applicable to the issue at hand: the author of that page could probably use some remedial training in critical thinking skills.

But, more importantly, everybody at a high level in the military is as much a political animal as a soldier (you may hear the phrase "politicians in uniform"). Like all politicians, they all have agendas, and a lot of what they say is determined by those agendas.

In politics, perceptions of reality are often more important than reality*.

In this case, the Army and Navy leaders, had a vested interest in keeping the public from thinking the atomic bombs won the war. The Army leaders wanted the public to believe the Army won it (or would have won it, given more time). The Navy leaders wanted the public to believe the Navy won it.

As the saying goes, for the Army in WW2 in the Pacific, there were two enemies: the Japanese, and the Navy. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it also wasn't an accident that they had to divide up the Pacific in two commands, one controlled by the Army, one by the Navy. Politics are part of human nature, and this has a big impact on how groups or organizations function (or, in many cases, misfunction).

This may seem pretty awful, but the Japanese had it worse. The Allied forces were often able to cooperate in spite of the inter-service politics, the Japanese not so much.

Getting back to the issue at hand, Air Force (Army Air Corps) leaders had a vested interest in the public believing the long term strategic bombardment campaign had won the war (thus leading to the conclusion, long favored by air proponents, that the Army and Navy were both incidental). They also didn't want people to think that dropping the atomic bombs made that much difference, since you don't need a big Air Force just to drop the occasional atomic bomb.

While we're on the subject of political statement, another thing to consider is that experienced politicians (and bureaucrats) will often create a paper trail supporting both sides of a potentially controversial issue. Then, should the winds of public (or organizational) opinion blow strongly in one direction or the other, they can produce the appropriate documentation (and destroy the other) to show they were on the "right" side all along (whichever side that might be). Back-dating diary entries is one of the options here.

We can go further, and look at other agendas these leaders would have had, or other ways in which political considerations could have influenced the quotes, but I think I've made enough of the point to justify you doing some research. There are many books that discuss these issues. I'd recommend going to Amazon and picking out half a dozen on the air war, since those books will probably provide good insight into the politics.

A good book on social science research would probably help as well: this will give you a better foundation for assessing the quality of the material you see, and thinking critically about it. A good introduction to industrial psychology or organizational behavior might be useful as well, to give you some insight into politics in and between organizations.

* Often this means political types focus so much on shaping perception that they can't be bothered to actually understand reality, which leads to lots of interesting blunders.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can imagine that a container can get loaded with a nuke and then delivered to the port of Los Angeles, New York or Amsterdam where it will go off.

I can imagine aliens invading the planet. That doesn't make it a realistic fear. Real nukes are complicated and delicate systems, it takes lots of practice to get one working and more importantly maintain it in a functional state. The radiation tends to destroy the electronics pretty quickly if you leave it assembled.

We might get a dirty bomb, but those aren't nukes, those are just conventional explosives seeded with radioactive material and aren't going to contaminate more than a few city blocks - and if they go off on a dock it will shut down the port until it is cleaned up but it isn't going to kill very many people since ports aren't heavily populated.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[FlyHelicopters]

You can't hide nuclear tests all that well. Where and when should this test have taken place?

In 2015, you're right...

In 1945, you're wrong...

However, the OP is mistaken, Germany was on their way to developing a nuke, but frankly were 2-3 years away. Japan wasn't even close and frankly wasn't even sure what it was when it hit them.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[FlyHelicopters]

Every time they get used, there's even a chance of them bringing absolute peace to the world, for a few million years at least.

Cute, and lots of young people have been brought up to think that, but it isn't true.

All the nukes of the world wouldn't wipe us out, the idea that we can destroy the world several times over is just propaganda.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[serviscope_minor]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people,

Basically... yes.

This is one of the things I don't like about the anti-nuclear parties in the UK, like the greens. They say they'll scrap the deterrent and then go on a campaign worldwide telling people how they don't need nuclear weapons. Well, I'm sure Putin will see the error of his ways when being educated by the greens, and won't at all be rubbing his hands with glee about the weakening defensive capabilities of NATO.

The genie is out of the bottle and you can't invent it.

(uninvent?)... but again yes.

Not only that, but unlike in fantasy books where we might like to read about the long lost skills of the ancients, that isn't happening. Technology is advancing at a fearsome pace, and there are plenty of "dual use" technologies escpecially when it comes to things like medical isotopes.

Laser isotope separation is a thing, and a very useful one, but also promises to be able to separate fissile isotopes with vastly greater efficiency than gas centrifuges. The basic tech is based on precision lasers (another immensely useful tech) and high speed electronics, and those are only going to get better and better.

My ancient broken eeepc also has more computing power than the Americans could ever have dreamed of while they were creating the bomb originally and simulating things. Not to mention that algorithms originally developed to simulate such things have been and continue to be developed to a vastly more advanced state because they're useful for all sorts of things, for example machine learning, which has mathematical properties very similar to many physical systems.

Seismographs.

[Ihlosi]

In 1945, you're wrong...

They did have seismographs in 1945.

Japan's surrender attempts??

[Taco Cowboy]

The Samurai rather commit harakiri than surrendering, its all about pride and honor

Japan being the land of the Samurai, thinking of surrendering is itself a blasphemy, something which is much worse than death itself

The talk of "Japan's surrender attempts" is nothing more than heresy, a fabrication by those who subscribe to historical revisionism

Re:Japan's surrender attempts??

[tehcyder]

Exactly, the main evidence against the statement that the Japanese weren't going to surrender but would fight until they were all dead with swords in their hands is the fact that they did, in fact, surrender.

Re:Japan's surrender attempts??

[david_thornley]

The Russo-Japanese war (1904-1905) was run by Samurai, and the Japanese received praise for their clean warfare and excellent treatment of prisoners. The only Samurai thing about Japan in WWII was the government propaganda. The US had made an attempt to figure out what was behind that, but it didn't lead to any conclusions that the Japanese would surrender.

People were guilty of "thought crimes" in WWII Japan, mostly (I believe) for defeatism. Rear Admiral Tanaka, an experienced and highly competent destroyer commander, got beached for openly saying the Japanese were losing.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Mike Frett]

You plan to launch these Nuclear Weapons at whom exactly? Terrorists don't have a home and I assure you, on a long enough time-line, Terrorists will get their hands on something Nuclear and detonate it.

That Country will be looking for someone to blame.

As for World Wars, we should be looking at China. I'd place every Penny I own that China would be the instigator for that War.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[tehcyder]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people

In an age where you can watch people being beheaded or tortured to death by ISIL on your phone, I find this hard to believe.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[tehcyder]

Real nukes are complicated and delicate systems, it takes lots of practice to get one working and more importantly maintain it in a functional state.

I think the rather more realistic fear is that terrorists will steal a bomb, not make one themselves. And, so the argument goes, the more nuclear bombs there are to steal, the easier it becomes to steal one.

5/10 with rice

[GrumpySteen]

I like how the submitter tries to sound intellectual by using terms like "Manichean" despite writing garbled phrases like "leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility."

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[drinkypoo]

We've had, more or less, 70 years of world peace since then, depending on how you look at it (there were a whole lot of regional wars during that time).

The USA has not been in a military conflict with someone during how many of those wars? In fact, it's been a constant low-level state of world war ever since WWII.

Ugh, how did I write that

[drinkypoo]

The USA has not been in a military conflict with someone during how many of those wars?

That was a horrible thing to write. What I meant to write was "The USA has not been in a military conflict with someone during how many days since those wars?" The answer is pathetically low. We've been in a conflict with someone basically the whole time. Endless war is the new normal, and you didn't even notice.

Re:Ugh, how did I write that

[ScentCone]

Endless war is the new normal, and you didn't even notice.

No, it's the OLD (and continuing) normal. Squabbles over borders, religion, resources and even personality cults have been ongoing, pretty much without interruption, throughout all of human history. The huge eruptions of the "world" wars were the aberrations. Things like (for a current example) the ongoing slaughter over Islamic culture clash (whether with IEDs in the Middle East or machetes in some contested village in Africa) have always been the norm. Things like Putin rolling forces into Ukraine while telling everyone he's helping them - that's the historical norm. If the US is continually involved, it's because just like the rest of the world, we have a demonstrable vested interest in the outcome of such things. Pretending we don't is just silly.

Re:Ugh, how did I write that

[drinkypoo]

we have a demonstrable vested interest in the outcome of such things. Pretending we don't is just silly.

Of course we do, that's how we maintain the inequity upon which our nation is based. The USA cannot exist in its current form without continually shitting on other countries.

Shitting is actually a horrible metaphor because shit eventually turns into soil, what we are doing is much worse. We're planting poison oak.

Re:Ugh, how did I write that

[ScentCone]

I see. So, the fact that crazy Islamists are butchering whole villages full of people on multiple continents, or China is positioning itself to control the entire coast of Asia, or that Putin is taking over former Soviet victims ... that's the US, at it again! Sure enough, that's us promoting inequality again. When Pakistan sends their Taliban proxies to go village to village burning down schools and shooting school teachers who dare to educate girls, and we try to stop that ... that's us promoting inequality again! We're horrible that way.

Re:Ugh, how did I write that

[drinkypoo]

I see. So, the fact that crazy Islamists are butchering whole villages full of people on multiple continents,

Remember US involvement in Iran? Training, Funding Saddam? Remember when we went into Iraq recently, and segregated neighborhoods that were coexisting peacefully before we fucked things up? I guess you don't, or you wouldn't be talking this mess.

or China is positioning itself to control the entire coast of Asia, or that Putin is taking over former Soviet victims ... that's the US, at it again!

China is absolutely the fault of the west, and predominantly the USA. Where do you think the money is coming from to do what they're doing? They would have collapsed in on themselves if not for that influence.

When Pakistan sends their Taliban proxies to go village to village burning down schools and shooting school teachers who dare to educate girls, and we try to stop that ... that's us promoting inequality again! We're horrible that way.

When the Taliban got a one billion dollar cash infusion from BushCo, what did you think the results would be? Sunshine and puppies?

We didn't start the fire... we just poured gasoline on it. Don't pretend we didn't, because that is ignorant bullshit designed to absolve you of guilt.

Re:Ugh, how did I write that

[Ol Olsoc]

No, it's the OLD (and continuing) normal. Squabbles over borders, religion, resources and even personality cults have been ongoing, pretty much without interruption, throughout all of human history.

It's probably going to be our demise. We are a bit too overendowed with aggression. Probably served us well at one time, and now it our achilles heel. Humans just enjoy killing each other too much, and it's a genetic predisposition.

I have no doubt that at some point in the future, we're going to wipe ourselves off the face of the earth, and most of us will be appluding the action.

We have weapons that can destroy the world, and minds designed to demand it.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

its a completely false idea that we even need nukes if anyone has a nuke.
realistically our military is so vast and well equipped that even in the face of enemy nukes our forces would prevail.

nukes aren't a threat against a nation's military forces, they are a threat against a nations civilian populace.
in the face of conventional equipped US vs nuclear equipped adversary our nation would still prevail.

Academic Bovine Stercus

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe benefiting from the liberties successfully preserved by defeating the Nazis and the Empire of Japan should be a war crime. In that instance, everyone should STFU.

The bomb

[Nukenbar]

While I hope nuclear weapons are never used again, I find the annual "feel pity" for the Japanese sentiment to be misplaced. Could someone cite the number of people (in the millions) who were killed due to Japanese aggression starting in the 1930s? As set forth in Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, 300,000 Chinese were raped, tortured and killed in that city alone. A Japanese paper covered a contest between 2 officers to see who could kill 100 Chinese the fastest with swords. Pearl Harbor, Bataan death march, POWs killed can be added to the toll.

I do not blame today's Japanese for those acts anymore than today's German's are responsible for Hitler. I do object to the implication that the atomic bombings were pointless and that these ceremonies are not put in the context of historical facts.

Re:The bomb

[MoarSauce123]

While I get your point you err in one: the bombing were pointless in regards to Japanese defeat. The bombings took only place to make a point to the Soviets.

I fascinating place to visit

[RogueWarrior65]

The Trinity Test site is open to visitors twice a year. It's a very surreal experience. You can still find tiny bits of trinitite on the ground there.

I also find it fascinating how many people today are debating whether or not dropping the bomb was necessary. What is the point of such a debate? You can't change what happened. Nobody has the cajones to use one now. It's all bloviating.

Let Hiroshima itself be Peshkin's monument

[Applehu Akbar]

As a prosperous city in a free country. Had the war gone differently, it might have ended up in a regime that would have looked like North Korea, or been a battleground on which a much larger number of civilians would have died in combat.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[richard.cs]

Any good final-year engineering or physics student could make a gun-type bomb and expect it to work first time.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

As horrible as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, those cities have been rebuilt even better over the past 70 years, while Detroit, arguably the richest city in the US at the time Hiroshima was bombed, lies in ruins.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think the rather more realistic fear is that terrorists will steal a bomb, not make one themselves.

As stated originally, they will find it difficult to keep it operational. The idea that they will steal it and then be able to quickly deploy it is unrealistic.

Re:Far Beyond America.... The A-Bomb has Saved Liv

[david_thornley]

Germany was not working hard on developing a nuke, since their top nuclear scientists (deliberately or otherwise) made a miscalculation that said a nuclear bomb would have to be about a hundred times its actual size. They were looking into radiological weapons.

While the Japanese weren't anywhere near close to detonating a nuke, and I don't think they had the materials anyway, they did have nuclear scientists and a couple of atomic bomb programs (one for the Army, one for the Navy). Neither went very far, but the Japanese did indeed know what had happened.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people

In an age where you can watch people being beheaded or tortured to death by ISIL on your phone, I find this hard to believe.

LOL.

To the leftist, the ghetto goblin aspiring rapper that rapes their daughter and steals their minivan is just "misunderstood youth"

They don't even believe in evil when it breaks into their own living room.

Thinking that the desert dwelling goat herders are "evil" is so far from the leftist's ability to "think" that they get angry when someone else says, thinks or believes it.

Re: There is an illusion today among younger peopl

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool straw man, bro

Trinity Site Hell Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to give Trinity Site a big salute today as I drive by it on my way to Ruidoso NM. And to all you whiny revisionist progbots - go fuck yourselves with Oppenheimer's pipe!

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[Khashishi]

Unfortunately they won't deter true terrorists that are willing to die for their cause.

Did you mean, they won't deter true terrorists that are willing to kamikaze?
Well, maybe the key is to not kill their leaders and instead negotiate with them.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[KeensMustard]

There is an illusion today among younger people that somehow our world isn't full of evil people,

Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people - this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.

that another Hitler or Stalin won't emerge, that world peace is at hand and that only small regional conflicts far away will happen in the future.

Stalin was an ally - at least for a while. So was Osama Bin Laden. And Saddam Hussein. And the US.

A million people died in Iraq. A million. At this point, nobody as proffered a credible reason why a million people were killed. Were they all teh evil?

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[FlyHelicopters]

Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people

Well, you're welcome to your viewpoint, but I disagree...

this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.

What a wonderful way to whitewash the whole subject and remove any responsibility... Everything is relative in your world, everything is ok...

Thankfully there are rough men (and now women) who are willing to stand up and do what is required, so you can sit there in your safe, warm house and make such absurd comments.

That 'nagora' fella is a hateful jap

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it very funny that you attack someone that attempts to understand history beyond the high-school textbook, and that you attribute traits to me that must come from some sad, psychotic little part of your head. I take no pride or shame in what my country has done in historical wars, I was not there. I do, however, like to look at what factors contributed to what decisions, especially the missteps along the way that changed the outcome, and the possible or likely ramifications of different decisions. That you are unable to be dispassionate about something that happened long before you were born and that most people have managed to move beyond says a lot more about you than it does about me

As I read the comments from you and that 'nagora' fella I can't help but notice the glaring differences emanated from the (two) comments.

The comment from that 'nagora' fella is filled with intense vile and hatreds, and it is packed with strong, odious words such as "Lies and propaganda", " People like you make me sick" and "You're a disgrace to the human race"

On the other hand, your comment came complete with background facts, such as the inhumane treatment of the allied pow at the hand of the jap imperial army, had made the allies very wary of yet another japanese trickery

I gave some thoughts into the differences of the two comments and come to realize one thing - the hatred from "nagora" is genuine, because he is a jap, and the japs, not only 'nagora', steadfastly refuse to change their way they think, even after their biggest blunder they themselves had perpetrated - The Asian side of war during the World War II era

In other words, the japs had learned nothing from WW II, instead, they gather up and compact all their hatred towards the "others", and then plant it deep inside their psyche - which in turn makes them so intensely hateful, as that nagora' fella has so successfully demonstrated

Entirely on topic

[dbIII]

It's an example of a gross failure to estimate casualties via a major failure in intelligence gathering.

Common cause was different

[MoarSauce123]

The common cause was not "stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese". While that may have been a cause initially, Hitler was already history and the Japanese offered surrender several times, but accepting it was dragged out by the US because Japan was the only enemy left in the war that could be nuked without fear of retribution. The sole purpose in the end was not to defeat Japan, but to demonstrate to the Soviets that the US has a big, deadly weapon...and not just one, but two and that they work. The hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese civilians paid with their lives just so that the US could make a point! Sadly, neither the US government nor many other governments have learned a single thing from this sheer insanity.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[KeensMustard]

Evil is a thing you do. It's a verb. There's no division into 'good' people and 'evil' people

Well, you're welcome to your viewpoint, but I disagree...

Too bad. You don't get to redefine concepts that are millennia old to suit your purposes.

this is not a Disney cartoon with handsome, prancing heroes and dastardly villains with sycophants as offsiders. There's no musical cue or colouring choice to guide you into knowing whose arrogance and misogyny and murdering you need to contextualise as the forgivable failings of the good and whose wrongdoing arises because they are evil.

What a wonderful way to whitewash the whole subject and remove any responsibility... Everything is relative in your world, everything is ok...

Are you so stupid that you replied to my remarks without reading them?

Thankfully there are rough men (and now women) who are willing to stand up and do what is required, so you can sit there in your safe, warm house and make such absurd comments.

Who are these rough men you are talking about? ISIS?

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[FlyHelicopters]

Too bad. You don't get to redefine concepts that are millennia old to suit your purposes.

Neither do you, and you're wrong. You saying you're not doesn't make it so.

Are you so stupid that you replied to my remarks without reading them?

Pot, meet kettle... You didn't actually reply to what I wrote, you simply attacked me...

My point stands, everything is relative and ok in your world, you don't have any sense of right or wrong, good or evil...

There are indeed evil people in the world, it isn't just a verb, it is also a noun.

Who are these rough men you are talking about? ISIS?

I'm not surprised you would say that, given your rainbow happy world view.

Try the US military, the UK military, etc...

Please, go back to your hippie liberal coffee bar and leave the real world to those who live in it.

Re:There is an illusion today among younger people

[KeensMustard]

Neither do you, and you're wrong. You saying you're not doesn't make it so.

Would you like me to quote from ancient manuscripts to prove that doing evil things is what makes you evil, not your race or tribe?

Are you so stupid that you replied to my remarks without reading them?

Pot, meet kettle... You didn't actually reply to what I wrote, you simply attacked me...

Because you claimed that my assertion: that evil is an action (i.e 'sin' to give an older name) is somehow relativism, whereas your claim is that: the following is okay: murdering, raping, blowing the arms off kids, electric shocks through the scrotum, claiming that a village is a military base at the UN and then blowing it up, even though it's a village, bearing false witness about the presence of WMD manufacturing facilities in another country. Killing 1 million people. These things are OK, in your mind, because of the team that did them.

THAT'S relativism! You claim that younger people today don't understand evil and don't know what evil is. How utterly ironic: you should introduce yourself! You applaud murder and genocide. Introduce yourself to these kids, and then they will know the face of evil.

Who are these rough men you are talking about? ISIS?

Try the US military, the UK military, etc...

No thanks. I prefer my marriage go ahead without being blown up, my kids retain their limbs and my scrotum unwired.