Opinion of the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs in 1945

[Nym90]

A necessary evil.

[RI]

I think we are making a false dichotomy of invading Japan versus nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[opebo]

I think we are making a false dichotomy of invading Japan versus nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes, as I pointed out above.  Why would we want to invade Japan?  Just blockade it, starve it out, or just offer a status quo peace.

[JSojourner]

I think we are making a false dichotomy of invading Japan versus nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Yes, as I pointed out above.  Why would we want to invade Japan?  Just blockade it, starve it out, or just offer a status quo peace.

The status quo peace would not have been accepted.  Particularly by well over a million, and maybe two million, Japanese troops not in the homeland.

The blockade and starvation process was already more or less in effect, with some holes.  It could have been tightened up.  I would expect the Japanese would have given in sometime around 1950.  After three or four million civilians had starved to death.  Again, the dreaded bomb saved lives.

I wish I could see another equation, Opie, believe me.  I despise atomic weapons and pray earnestly for them to be banned and scrapped everywhere.  But I don't see any other realistic means of ending the war swiftly and with the least loss of life.  (Unless someone can chart a believable scenario where the Japanese are shown the power of the bomb in a remote area and convinced to surrender.  Given the warrior code extant in Japan's military and ruling class, I would find that difficult to swallow.)

[dead0man]

nukes are teh evil, 100% every time, nothing will change the mind of the close minded anti-war crusader


(although some of them think Iran should have them....just for balance of course)

[12th Doctor]

I think we are making a false dichotomy of invading Japan versus nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I am ignoring Opebo, but what, exactly, do you propose as the alternative.  If we had attempted a blockade, we likely would have ended up killing even more Japanese than died otherwise, not to mention that the Japanese would have nickle and dimed us with suicide tactics against our ships.

Japan had no intention of peace.  To Japan, a resource poor country, domination of Pacific trade was essential to survival... it still is.  The difference between then and now is that back then the mindset was that physical empire was the only way to insure this security.

The Japanese has already decided that it was all or nothing from the first shots of the war.  They went to war out of what they saw as desperation.

The only reasonable alternative to the bombs was an invasion.  Bottom line.  And we now know that American estimates for potential U.S. casualties, as horrifying as they were, were also woefully inadequate.

Japanese kamikazes had been ordered to target the lightly armored, densely packed troop transports, not the armored warships with trained sailors that they had targeted earlier in the war.  They also had far, far more equipment than was presupposed, not only because they were keeping most of it in caves for storage (including advanced weapons they weren't supposed to have, like jets, but because they had striped all the equipment from the forces in Manchuria... the fact that they had done so basically puts to bed the theory that the Japanese actually surrendered because of "the stunning Soviet successes" on the mainland, since there is no way they could have expected any other result; the Japanese weren't stupid.

[12th Doctor]

At that stage in the war, Japanese soldiers in the field had been dying at a rate of 17-1 compared to Americans.  Imagine how much the death toll would have sky rocketed during an invasion of the homeland, with civilians both fighting and caught in the middle.

One in four civilians on Okinawa died during the battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Transplant that kind of fighting to Japanese cities and you get hellish civilian casualties.  I think you're right that the A-bomb actually saved civilian lives.

Indeed, and most of those were not "collateral damage" either.  Many of the ones who were killed by U.S. Marines were killed for trying to kill our guys in suicide attacks.  Most of the rest were people who committed suicide "as a last resort" by jumping off the cliffs of the island, because they had been told by their government that they would suffer a fate worse than death if captured by the Americans.

At this stage in the war, a Japanese "anti-tank mine" was a guy sitting in a hole with an artillery shell and a hammer waiting for a tank to roll overhead.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

nukes are teh evil, 100% every time, nothing will change the mind of the close minded anti-war crusader


(although some of them think Iran should have them....just for balance of course)

[Mint]

The second dropping (Nagasaki) was completely unnecessary. Hiroshima may not have been necessary, either. Even if an atomic bomb had to be dropped, there were ways that you could have done it to cut down on casualties while still making a statement.

If they didn't drop the bomb on Nagasaki the Japanese government would have just continued to deny that the first bombing was anything other than a natural disaster. Now that's not to say I necessarily think the bombs were the deciding factor in the war ending... Hasegawa's analysis that it was actually the Soviets closing in on Manchuria that was the final straw for the Japanese seems pretty convincing to me.

[12th Doctor]

The second dropping (Nagasaki) was completely unnecessary. Hiroshima may not have been necessary, either. Even if an atomic bomb had to be dropped, there were ways that you could have done it to cut down on casualties while still making a statement.

If they didn't drop the bomb on Nagasaki the Japanese government would have just continued to deny that the first bombing was anything other than a natural disaster. Now that's not to say I necessarily think the bombs were the deciding factor in the war ending... Hasegawa's analysis that it was actually the Soviets closing in on Manchuria that was the final straw for the Japanese seems pretty convincing to me.

Except not, because, as I said in my post, all the heavy equipment was taken away from those unites and sent to the home islands.  Most the of the Japanese troops in Manchuria had rifles... most of them.  The Japanese were not stupid.  There is no way they could have expected any other result.

[12th Doctor]

The Soviet Theory is more revisionist history, pro-Soviet bs, designed to discredit American actions.  There is no real evidence to back it.  Only stipulation, which falls hard in the face of the known facts.

[opebo]

The Japanese has already decided that it was all or nothing from the first shots of the war.  They went to war out of what they saw as desperation.

Well, actually they went to war because they saw that they were just a few decades from being made into America's pet dog.  So, they tried to beat the beast before it got them.

Events have proven their long-term strategic predictions to be accurate.