Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings

So why do we always here that an invasion and/or an atomic bomb was necessary to force surrender?

Given the fact that the generals were trying to assassinate Hirohito after he announced that he planned to surrender, I'd say that, no, the Japanese surrender wasn't guaranteed. Without the nuclear bombs, there would have been even more resistance to the idea of surrender, and Hirohito might not have been able to successfully push the idea through. It could likely be a sense of Values Dissonance, in that the Americans could not fully understand the Honor Before Reason attitude that the entire Japanese military had been infected with; most of them would have rather died gloriously defending their homeland than surrender in shame.

edited 5th Sep '11 11:02:45 AM by tropetown

Because its a cause of debate amongst historians and the "official" version was the one agreed upon after the war. TBH I'd sooner not drag all this up, because (as horriffic as it is) it's not going to bring back the people involved and will just create tensions between countries that can get along quite well.

Threadhop: If we were so sure that Soviet Union won't invade Japan, what was the point in war declaration? And why were we so afraid of Soviet influence during the Cold War? Even if Soviets won't directly commence Operation Downfall themselves, their power and influence might have been a threat to Japan and would have pushed Japan in favor of surrendering.

First point: The reason for an invasion was to prevent the Japanese from gathering their power and mounting a counterattack. It was a matter of military expediency, since if they would not surrender, the reason was obviously because they were planning to fight back, and the Allies had no wish to draw the war on any longer than they had to. Plus, it wouldn't be a smart idea to allow the Japanese military to gather its strength, since what they did to the lands they conquered was beyond brutal.

Second point: The reason the US, and every capitalist country was afraid of Soviet influence during the Cold War was, simply put, because they didn't want to have their system overthrown in favor of communism. Why would a rich capitalist want a system designed to bring him down to gain power and influence all around the world? That's bad for business. It was framed as a conflict between democracy and totalitarianism, but the real reason was because the leaders of the capitalist system did not want to be overthrown, and they didn't want the replacement system to leave them poor, or worse, dead. Of course, communism was doomed to fail from the beginning; capitalism is now, and has always been, a far superior system.

Third point: The Japanese military was notoriously dedicated to Honor Before Reason: the military commanders had likely considered the likelihood of a Soviet invasion when devising their strategies for the war. The fact that, even with the nukes on top of that threat, some of them still didn't want to surrender, means that a Soviet invasion would not have been a deterrent.

edited 5th Sep '11 2:18:30 PM by tropetown

Soviets were going to oust them from the mainland and prevent them from rearming with resources derived thereof...

My opinion is that even if the casualties from nuking Japan and Operation Downfall would have been equal, nuking was the correct option from a military perspective simply because the lives of one's own side are of a higher priority than those of the enemy. This is ignoring moral issues and whatnot, of course.

Now, with the actual numbers, factoring in a couple hundred thousand lives lost (all Japanese) vs. 6 to 14 million lives lost (combined Japanese and American) (using William Shockley's estimates), the couple hundred thousand lives lost are the better option. Hell, all of the estimates indicated higher casualties in the first 90 days for just the American troops than the actual casualties caused by the atomic bombs.

edited 5th Sep '11 6:57:11 PM by Balmung

Thread Hop

It was right, but not good decision. It ended war much faster than anyone hoped and we must remember that people back didn't have insight we have now. All they saw was an nation ready to fight to last man, woman and child. You just completed bomb like nothing before, you get tempted to use it.

US dropped two of them. Those two are only nukes ever used in warfare. After using them, everyone became scared shitless that anyone would start using them in large scale.

Imagine if Cold War had started without people fully realising full extent of nukes? US saw their in test, but full understanding of their damage didn't come untill it was seen in action.

So yeah, neccesary but not good.

edited 5th Sep '11 9:40:54 PM by Mandemo

exactaly.

also, ive been out of this for a while so this is just a response to those wo said america was no differnt then any others invovled. that is just so wrong. we didn't join until we were directally attacked, and we didn't even declar war on germany and italy, they declared war on us!

Anyone who says America was no different from anyone else needs to see this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes

This: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

And this, for the alternative to the Hiroshima bombings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

Simple. The soviets wanted to invade Korea and China. And in fact the succesful did the later.

That is why they declared war.

edited 7th Sep '11 5:32:03 AM by Baff

Tropetown, the discussion of "was the U.S. really different?" is a) off topic, and b) Flame Bait, as no one wants to get into one of those threads where we list all the bad shit any given superpower has done and compare the lists.

I still remain unconvinced that Operation Downfall would ever have been necessary, and I have heard anybody who does explain why the War Department itself said that it wouldn't be.

I think whoever in the War Department wrote that was entirely too optimistic. That's why I say they're wrong.

Thread hop:

I don't think it easy to say what would have happened if we didn't drop the nuclear bombs. Statements such as "they would have fought to the death" are rather silly. Individual Japanese armies were surrendering like crazy over in China and even in some of the islands that the US fought on. American soldiers fought a few pitched battles and thought, holy shit this is crazy, while the rest of the world had been scrumming in death and decay for years longer (and in the case of East Asia, for four years before the US even entered the war, let alone did anything in the Pacific). So they figured, jeez, if we fought at least one battle this hard, we could expect this harsh of a battle in all future battles. But that certainly wasn't true.

Considering that much of the civilian population had already become quite surrender-ready, it was just the top military command and some hardcore military units that didn't want to surrender. So really, we have no idea what kind of mess would have happened. The issue is more that that Americans didn't want to take a chance that the Soviets take over Japan.

As for whether it was moral or not, generally speaking, since the Americans hit civilian targets it counts as a straight up war crime. However, given that the Japanese did rather unspeakable atrocities, the only people who feel bad about having nuked two cities are the Americans (also the Japanese were the aggressors, so they get to complain about absolutely nothing). So it's rather strange that the people against whom the Japanese committed all those crimes got to do exactly nothing but it was the Americans who got to exact revenge on their behalf.

edited 8th Sep '11 8:32:26 AM by breadloaf

...knowing the Chinese, Koreans, and Filipinos, if they were in charge of the nuclear campaign I can imagine after bomb number two some of them would have turned to the Americans and said "Okay, where's numbers three through nine?"

Vengeance never leads to happy endings.

I would agree, they probably would have leveled Japan given the chance. They've since calmed down but most people feel like Japan has never repented. The Japanese on the other hand feel that since they never committed war crimes against the Americans in any significant way (they did torture and kill Po Ws though), that the nukes were unjustified and that the Americans must repent. It's really an odd situation to me.

Given that, I just don't think the death count would be much different with or without nukes but what is unfortunate is that Americans didn't try to for the "blow up an island" idea. Oh well, I guess the Japanese would still bitch about the radiation and blindness that would have resulted from that anyway.

We need to repent? Get the fuck out of here.

The whole political clusterfuck is just a result of too many East Asians unwilling to lose face. Good luck convincing them otherwise, I loved the time I spent over there and the people that I met, but you'll have an easier time pulling teeth than convincing most of those who've grown up in such cultures that there are worse things in life than publicly admitting your seniors/grandparents might have fucked up.

It's not exactly different anywhere else in the world, just human nature to not admit wrong.

Yet they pretty much were fighting to the death in the Pacific against the US. Peleliu, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Philippines, all over the Pacific their garrisons were often fighting to the last man. That's where we got the idea beyond their preparations.

We didn't fight one or two pitched battles where they did that and we got surprised. They did that for THREE YEARS on land even on US soil at Attu Island.

edited 8th Sep '11 4:05:39 PM by MajorTom

If anyone should be sorry about what they did in World War II, it's Japan. The civilians there were not responsible for what the state did, like they were in Germany, but telling the Americans they should be sorry for ending the war and not sentencing their own soldiers to die is idiotic.

edited 8th Sep '11 6:23:08 PM by tropetown

Well in any case, nothing said after my post really affects it anyway. Bombs dropped is unfortunate, and the loss of life was unnecessary had Japan simply stopped its aggression earlier. Instead they decided to fight those wars. They paid the price. When being such a clear-cut case of an aggressor, it's hard to find much to back the argument that the US should feel bad.

During the course of the Gilbert and Marshall islands campaign, that seized the islands that were the outer islands of the permiter of the Japanese defense line. Over 17,000 Japanese killed.

The Marianas campaign which went further in and was the next offense. 63,000+ Dead on the Japanese side alone. Most of the actions were fought until they killed themselves, were caputured, or were killed in action. Battle of Saipan had over 5,000 Enemy Suicides to avoid capture.

Battle of Okinawa 100,000 Enemy dead. This was the one that pretty much helped seal the decision.

Every single one of the Islands we took from them we had to nearly completely wipe out the local garrisons.

Time and time again we saw first hand how determined the enemy was to fight to the bitter end. The few times they did not the vast majority of the force fought to the end.

The Second Japenese-Sino war is at least as bloody and vicious as the Allied campaigns to seize the islands.

At least? It was more so. I've read horrible, horrible things about that war. The rape of Nanking barely touches the surface of what they did.

I personally am not sure weather or not dropping the bombs was necessary, but I believe the US made the best possible decision at the time.