Loser Araysar
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Sure, but that has no bearing on this argument. The Japanese were desperate and were willing to hold out until every single option was exhausted.
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Oppenheimer (2023)
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Rajaah
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It is super easy for people to mentally lump everyone from a group / ideology / country together.
Japanese soldiers did many horrible atrocities, therefore "Japan itself" is responsible and reaps what it sows.
The people who got nuked included a lot of kids, babies, old people, and probably cats and dogs, all of who got incinerated despite having nothing at all to do with any of those atrocities. Having them hold the responsibility or "YGWYFD" for things that happened previously is some idiotic shit.
As Trump would say, there were many fine people on all sides, who lost everything just because they lived on the wrong plot of land that was owned by a particular "side".
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Rajaah
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Personally I don't think using the nukes was necessary because I fully believe Russia had Japan about to surrender on their own. Japan HAD to go for Russia's demands once they took Manchuria. Nobody wants to deal with a brutal Russian invasion, just ask all the German women they raped. Japan values their gene pool very highly, so they were capitulating.
The US swooped in and did what they did, probably because the Pentagon and the war-hawks were positively itching to test out their new super-weapon on SOMEBODY before the war ended (primarily to send a message to the Soviet Union, but also just to see how well it worked on people).
It's kind of like how the US government only charged into Europe and "saved the day" once it was very clear the pendulum had changed sides and Germany was losing, after the USSR suffered catastrophic losses fighting them directly for years.
The US swooped in and did what they did, probably because the Pentagon and the war-hawks were positively itching to test out their new super-weapon on SOMEBODY before the war ended (primarily to send a message to the Soviet Union, but also just to see how well it worked on people).
It's kind of like how the US government only charged into Europe and "saved the day" once it was very clear the pendulum had changed sides and Germany was losing, after the USSR suffered catastrophic losses fighting them directly for years.
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Vandyn
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There was also the argument that if they went ahead and invaded Japan (costing american soldier lives) instead of dropping the bomb, Truman and the rest of the admin would of had a lot to answer for as they had a 2 billion dollar weapon and didn't use it.
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That's most likely a post war justification. Operation Downfall was planned but there was little chance of it going forward. The naval blockade, already in place, was far cheaper and was already starving them out of the war.
Sevens
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Rajaah
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Kaines
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TheNozz
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I did too initially when I was younger, but understand that any type of violent death will look worse in slow motion.
As someone said before, most of the examples of people being slowly disintegrated would in real life be dead before they even knew what happened. Probably the one example in that clip that makes the most sense is the dog because it’s depicted as having enough time to realize the danger, desperately trying to get through a fence and then the heat catches up to it.
Loser Araysar
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Unconditional surrender (what the Allies were demanding) was a bitter pill to swallow. The United States and Great Britain were already convening war crimes trials in Europe. What if they decided to put the emperor—who was believed to be divine—on trial? What if they got rid of the emperor and changed the form of government entirely? Even though the situation was bad in the summer of 1945, the leaders of Japan were not willing to consider giving up their traditions, their beliefs, or their way of life. Until Aug. 9. What could have happened that caused them to so suddenly and decisively change their minds? What made them sit down to seriously discuss surrender for the first time after 14 years of war?
It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in the late morning of Aug. 9, after the Supreme Council had already begun meeting to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only reached Japan’s leaders in the early afternoon—after the meeting of the Supreme Council had been adjourned in deadlock and the full cabinet had been called to take up the discussion. Based on timing alone, Nagasaki can’t have been what motivated them.
Hiroshima isn’t a very good candidate either. It came 74 hours—more than three days—earlier. What kind of crisis takes three days to unfold? The hallmark of a crisis is a sense of impending disaster and the overwhelming desire to take action now. How could Japan’s leaders have felt that Hiroshima touched off a crisis and yet not meet to talk about the problem for three days?
foreignpolicy.com
This article is a good summary of all the problems with the "atomic bomb forced Japanese surrender" premise.
Here's another excerpt that talks about the destructive power being a non factor.
We often imagine, because of the way the story is told, that the bombing of Hiroshima was far worse. We imagine that the number of people killed was off the charts. But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer.
From our perspective, Hiroshima seems singular, extraordinary. But if you put yourself in the shoes of Japan’s leaders in the three weeks leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the picture is considerably different. If you were one of the key members of Japan’s government in late July and early August, your experience of city bombing would have been something like this: On the morning of July 17, you would have been greeted by reports that during the night four cities had been attacked: Oita, Hiratsuka, Numazu, and Kuwana. Of these, Oita and Hiratsuka were more than 50 percent destroyed. Kuwana was more than 75 percent destroyed and Numazu was hit even more severely, with something like 90 percent of the city burned to the ground.
Three days later you have woken to find that three more cities had been attacked. Fukui was more than 80 percent destroyed. A week later and three more cities have been attacked during the night. Two days later and six more cities were attacked in one night, including Ichinomiya, which was 75 percent destroyed.
The one thing that is almost never talked about is that its politically difficult to go against the established narrative because you would have to acknowledge that the 1st bombing was unnecessary. And even if you argue that it was because US had no idea that Russia was invading or what Japanese intentions were, you're still faced with defending the 2nd bombing which was absolutely unnecessary as Russia had invaded Manchuria the day before. Its self-explanatory why US can never acknowledge this truth, but Japanese leaders can't acknowledge it either as they became willing US patsies in the postwar years.
It could not have been Nagasaki. The bombing of Nagasaki occurred in the late morning of Aug. 9, after the Supreme Council had already begun meeting to discuss surrender, and word of the bombing only reached Japan’s leaders in the early afternoon—after the meeting of the Supreme Council had been adjourned in deadlock and the full cabinet had been called to take up the discussion. Based on timing alone, Nagasaki can’t have been what motivated them.
Hiroshima isn’t a very good candidate either. It came 74 hours—more than three days—earlier. What kind of crisis takes three days to unfold? The hallmark of a crisis is a sense of impending disaster and the overwhelming desire to take action now. How could Japan’s leaders have felt that Hiroshima touched off a crisis and yet not meet to talk about the problem for three days?
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.
Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?
foreignpolicy.com
This article is a good summary of all the problems with the "atomic bomb forced Japanese surrender" premise.
Here's another excerpt that talks about the destructive power being a non factor.
We often imagine, because of the way the story is told, that the bombing of Hiroshima was far worse. We imagine that the number of people killed was off the charts. But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer.
From our perspective, Hiroshima seems singular, extraordinary. But if you put yourself in the shoes of Japan’s leaders in the three weeks leading up to the attack on Hiroshima, the picture is considerably different. If you were one of the key members of Japan’s government in late July and early August, your experience of city bombing would have been something like this: On the morning of July 17, you would have been greeted by reports that during the night four cities had been attacked: Oita, Hiratsuka, Numazu, and Kuwana. Of these, Oita and Hiratsuka were more than 50 percent destroyed. Kuwana was more than 75 percent destroyed and Numazu was hit even more severely, with something like 90 percent of the city burned to the ground.
Three days later you have woken to find that three more cities had been attacked. Fukui was more than 80 percent destroyed. A week later and three more cities have been attacked during the night. Two days later and six more cities were attacked in one night, including Ichinomiya, which was 75 percent destroyed.
The one thing that is almost never talked about is that its politically difficult to go against the established narrative because you would have to acknowledge that the 1st bombing was unnecessary. And even if you argue that it was because US had no idea that Russia was invading or what Japanese intentions were, you're still faced with defending the 2nd bombing which was absolutely unnecessary as Russia had invaded Manchuria the day before. Its self-explanatory why US can never acknowledge this truth, but Japanese leaders can't acknowledge it either as they became willing US patsies in the postwar years.
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Burns
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Can't have it both ways, if it's less destructive than firebombing, then nukes are just a way to do the same thing with far less risk to American lives. Therefor it would have been necessary to use as many nukes as they had, proceeding from that point forward, to save American lives that would normally be shot down in the mass bomber formations in the conventional bombing campaigns (US Army Airforce had the highest casualty rate of any US service in WW2).
Also, I lean toward the argument that the USSR entering the war was the final nail in the coffin to give the Emperor enough support to throw in the towel, but the US had no idea what would actually bring Japan to the table. So the US had to proceed with the all out bombing and prep for the invasion, until the official white flag was waved. Its not like the surrender was a unanimous decision. The Japanese military wanted to keep fighting, even with the USSR involved and seemed prepared to accept the total annihilation of Japanese cities through firebombing or nukes.
As an aside, even as late as the 1950's, MacArthur's request to use nukes in Korea, shows that, at least in his mind, they were just another tool for use in war, and not the end of the world type scare almost everyone regards them as now.
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Loser Araysar
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That's a fair point but to be clear, I'm not trying to have it both ways. I personally think incendiary bombing was more destructive than atomic bombs, even when comparing individual conventional raids to A-bomb. You can see this in after action reports for various cities. For example, firebombing of Tokyo completely destroyed 16 square miles of the city in 1 night raid. The A-bomb destruction in Hiroshima was a radius of 1 mile from epicenter, so just over 3 square miles. A lot of its destructive power was wasted because it "bounced rubble".
But the popular notion is that A-bombs were some sort of super destructive weapon because most people dont have the knowledge of the various incendiary bombings by USAF to put Hiroshima/Nagasaki in context. Its not me they have to convince, its the majority who go "muh atomic bomb! so terrible!" which is their primary constituency, especially in Japan. They will never tell them that what this majority sees as a US overkill at best and a war crime at worst, might have been unnecessary.
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Barellron
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Sorry to interrupt the amateur hour History Channel thread but;
- Saw the movie
- It was excellent
- Score was particularly great. Goransson lifts a bit from Jonny Greenwood on how the strings are used so if you like the musical atmosphere of There Will Be Blood this will feel familiar.
- Saw the movie
- It was excellent
- Score was particularly great. Goransson lifts a bit from Jonny Greenwood on how the strings are used so if you like the musical atmosphere of There Will Be Blood this will feel familiar.
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Cybsled
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The firebombs destroyed more in the scheme of things, but you have to take into consideration the scale. The firebombing attack in 1945 on Tokyo involved over 300 bombers to do that. Hiroshima and Nagasaki took 1 bomber and 1 bomb each.
If you used the same scale as the Tokyo firebomb raid, but replaced it with nukes, then the fire bomb raid damage would be dwarfed in comparison. While the loss of life from the A-Bombs weren't as high, we also weren't committing as many attacking units (although that was because the US did not have enough atomic weapons for that scale at the time)
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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Who has to take the scale into the consideration? Me in 2023? The Japanese generals in 1945? Hirohito? US?
Everyone in the aforementioned list knew, or at least suspected that US didnt have stockpiles of these. Japanese had their own nuclear weapons program so this wasn't some shocking out-of-the-blue weapon to them.
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Cybsled
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Nagasaki made the Japanese question their initial presumptions that the US only had 1 bomb. They had no way of knowing that the US could have probably only dropped 1 more in relatively short order after the initial 2, although if needed, the US would have probably been able to get many more on an accelerated time frame.
The US had already demonstrated it was the king of rapid manufacturing and supply during WW2 - doesn't take that much of a stretch for the leap of logic to be made that at that point they had absolutely no idea how many nukes the US had, but it wasn't unreasonable they had many more considering how quickly the country had been able to pump out massive amounts of munitions and ships/planes/etc.
The US had already demonstrated it was the king of rapid manufacturing and supply during WW2 - doesn't take that much of a stretch for the leap of logic to be made that at that point they had absolutely no idea how many nukes the US had, but it wasn't unreasonable they had many more considering how quickly the country had been able to pump out massive amounts of munitions and ships/planes/etc.
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Varia Vespasa
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Over the course of the entire war the casualty rate was highest, but the firebombing campaigns specifically had low casualty rates. About 140 planes lost, and about 550 crew captured, of which about 160 were killed by the military or pissed-off civilians and 90 or so who died various ways while in custody, over half of which were left to burn in their prison in one of the Tokyo raids. Thats not a bad loss rate at all given the number of aircraft-missions over the time period. LeMay commented that it was safer to fly a combat mission over Japan than a training mission in the US during the (night-time) firebombing raids. Daylight had somewhat higher loss rates than nightime, and the daylight precision bombing campaign they tried before switching to wide-area firebombing ran around a 4% loss rate per mission. Mind you, Japans' defenses, such as they were, were less degraded then than they were by the time firebombing started in earnest.
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Rajaah
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I know Edge. My actual legit reaction was the HHH/HBK one so I picked that over the easy play on words.
Though TBH my real reaction to people saying Japanese people deserved it is probably more like this:
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Loser Araysar
Chief Russia Correspondent / Stock Pals CEO
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If you read the article, you'd know that the meeting to discuss unconditional surrender happened before they had knowledge of Nagasaki bombing, so Nagasaki (and therefore possible quantity of bombs) was irrelevant in consideration of surrender.
This actually reinforces my argument that the 2nd attack would be considered completely unnecessary by Americans and Japanese today if they were told why Japan really surrendered.
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