I still don't understand why Japan gives us a pass for nuking two of their cities.
I kid you not. There has always been some denial on that end about the role of starting that war, and even more denial about their behavior in China and elsewhere.
They probably "give a pass", because to do more on the international stage would draw attention to their many, many, inexcusable war crimes. Dropping plague fleas on China for instance, or the general activities of Unit 731, which would be bound to come up again and again... and they weren't trying to end a war.
That said, I think even in the US there's a lot of debate over the fact that Nagasaki probably didn't need to happen, but hindsight is 20/20.
I found a Quora thread[0] with several answers from apparent Japanese natives that appears to address this.
Some Japanese don't give the US a pass, and Japan's pacificm and anti-nuclear stance can be seen in light of that (see the answer by "Hide Izumi",) as Japan's express policy of not wanting to repeat the evil done to them by the Americans.
Others accept the common rationale that the bombs would have saved more lives in the end than an invasion, and that the Japanese government at the time had betrayed its own people, committed atrocities and had to be stopped.
Others, still, don't really care because it was 70 years ago.
It probably helps a great deal that the US invested money and effort into rebuilding Japan after the war. We didn't want them to turn out like Germany after WW1 and wind up fighting them again in a few years.
[0]https://www.quora.com/How-could-Japan-forgive-the-atom-bombs...
US submarines were already very nearly doing to Japan what Germany's U-boats attempted to do to Britain by the late stages of the war.
But imho the bombs are still overplayed as war-enders. I think the prospect of invasion and occupation by Russian forces had at least as much of an impact on the decision.
Hard to get angry that someone isn't playing fair when you would have done the same.
Of course, those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki might feel differently, but when do we ever ask for people's feelings?
Of course, not everybody thinks that way.
The latter two have killed far, far more than nuclear weapons ever have.
It was the most politically expedient option. The US had the atomic bomb, but couldn't use it on Germany. Not using it on Japan would have been unthinkable, and impossible to justify to US soldiers and their families, in the face of the potential lives lost invading Japan.
However, I'm certain the US would have used the atomic bombs regardless of what atrocities Japan committed, or whether Japan started the war, or how Okinawa turned out. In the case of the US invading Japan, they would have used nukes to soften Japan up for the invasion, and still invaded.
I can't accept the moral justifications made for using the atomic bombs because I'm not convinced there was any scenario in which the US would have had them and not used them.
At "best" they would have been able to take a port in northern Hokkaido, which would have been terribly obnoxious after the war, but not by itself strategically significant after they'd taken so many of the islands to the north. Details about this, and the massive resources that would have been required by us to take just Sapporo, can be found in the highly recommended Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 (https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947...) I recommend elsewhere in this subthread.
To imagine this was a major factor in the decision, when e.g. Truman's ship to the Potsdam Conference crossed the path of 4 US divisions being shuttled from the ETO to the Pacific is ludicrous. E.g. we're still issuing Purple Hearts from the initial lot MacArthur ordered, which was estimated to be 1/4 of what would be needed for Operation Downfall. This was also not long after the survivors of the Bataan Death March had been rescued, we were very much in a mood of revenge, see Grove's autobiography for a direct citation of this in reference to the bombing of Hiroshima.
Both sides were at fault, but to say that the U.S. was objectively right is an oversimplification.
The atomic bomb was horrific in its effect, but it was no different that the industrial scale bombardment implemented throughout the war.
Even a cursory study of this subject going back to the manipulations in China in the 1930s makes it pretty clear that the US/Allied cause was righteous.
> The firebombing of Tokyo itself did much worse.
Are you considering the aftereffects of radiation on top of the civilian death toll?
I think the U.S. is quite fortunate that they bombed Japan and not another country. Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing in such a short period of time. It makes people who blame the U.S. look bad because "oh but they're doing fine now, so it wasn't that big of a deal".
Right? One thread a JS expert, the next thread an authority on WWII. Welcome to HN :P
> Only the Japanese could so quickly recover from the horrors of a large-scale nuclear bombing
Ever heard of the Wirtschaftswunder? US support post-war was crucial for a lot of countries' recovery.
From what I can tell, it is difficult to make an argument against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki based on the civilian toll. The pacification of Japan without the bomb would seemingly have led to far more civilian deaths.
Just curious on how you could have arrived at this conclusion?
This comic book version of history present in the US is disgusting.
The US could have nuked a 100% military installation. The US could have detonated the nukes in Tokyo harbor to scare the shit out of the population.
No.
The US decided to nuke TWO, not one, TWO cities full of civilian human beings.
It had many interesting revelations, including the single thing which had a higher priority than the Manhattan Project: the building of a super-Mullberry for Operation Coronet, the invasion of the Kanto Plain on main island of Honshu, where Tokyo and much else was located.
And if you study the endgame on the Japanese side, it's really not likely nukes in Tokyo harbor to scare the shit out of the population would have worked, for one thing, they had no say in the running of the country. There also wasn't generally clean separations between military installations and civilian areas, especially since Japan is so crowded.
No, one of the clear factors was their leadership realizing we'd advanced to the point where a single plane could destroy a city, instead of requiring near Maximum Efforts with hundreds of them.
And of course, the bottom line is that these bombings worked. All else is speculation.
The imminent USSR invasion from the north played a significant part in the calculus of Japan's surrender. Too often the use of nuclear weapons alone gets credit, but there was a more complex political/diplomatic context surrounding _why_ they worked in the case.
Links for anyone interested in reading more on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/... http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08... http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japa...
Well, it added to things falling apart at an accelerating rate in just about every way. I'm of the opinion that the USSR's actions didn't hurt in the least, but we have absolutely no way of knowing if they were critical, and if so, how much. Probably the biggest thing was making the Army look even more incompetent, when they needed to be squelched ... well, that had been needed for decades....
Because the real action was in far off Manchuria, which we were ever more effectively cutting off from the home islands. And it wasn't like the USSR had the ability to project serious power into the latter without our help (and even then there main effort was of course focused on Eastern Europe), there was no serious "imminent USSR invasion from the north" in the offing.
At best, they could have taken a port on northern Hokkaido, which would have been utterly obnoxious after the surrender, but wouldn't change in the least the calculus of the Japanese plans to resist on the southern home islands where we were the critical threat. And where they had a real chance of "winning" as they perceived it (see Hell To Pay for lots more details) ... although that might not have turned out well given our chemical weapons capabilities, which those who didn't know about the Manhattan Project were ramping up.
In fact, after the Navy busted those railway ferries than ran from it to Honshu (some had steam turbines and could do 17 knots!), causing a severe immediate transportation problem due to the lost coal supply, I seriously doubt Hokkaido's contributions to the war effort going forward could even be significant, especially since we were hardly finished in cutting the link between the two islands.
Everything I've read indicates that it was the second bomb, which indeed happened on the same day as the declaration of war, that really got the attention of the rulers of Japan, and got them serious about surrendering.
the US is the only country on earth that ever dropped nuclear weapons on civilians. US generals decided to kill civilians, in retaliation, to achieve pure terror.
the US lost 3.5k civilians on 9/11 and started 2 wars for it.
but all this mil-porn floats around, civilian armchair heroes debate death and destruction with zero empathy or connection to reality.
just utterly inhuman.
Except, of course, Hiroshima was an entirely legitimate military target as well, it was among other things the Second General Army headquarters, e.g. over 3,000 of them were on a parade ground 900 yards from ground zero doing physical training. And it was adjacent to the naval center of Kure.
In Nagasaki, 90% of the population worked for 4 big arms or precursor companies (per Wikipedia), and in general the designated target cities were important industrial centers, or at least still were because by then we'd fire bombed all of the rest of them, excepting the 4 targets/alternates, Kyoto for the obvious reasons (it's the Emperor's city), and Tokyo was also left off the target list, for not only did we need people of authority still alive to surrender, there wasn't any left of it worth bombing. You do know that the early March firebombing of it everything went "right" and we destroyed 16 square miles and killed on the order of 100,000 people? A worst outcome than either of the atomic bombings.
You're saying, quite explicitly, since you don't deny my above facts, that it would have been better to let 400,000 completely innocent civilians per month in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere to continue to be killed, and to kill millions, probably tens of millions of Japanese in Operations Starvation and the like, and in Downfall, the invasion of the home islands, which would have also killed western allied troops by the 100,000s of thousands.
You'd truly prefer to have made East Asia that much more of an abattoir, further embittering all concerned, well, the survivors, that is?
the US lost 3.5k civilians on 9/11 and started 2 wars for it.
Not exactly, we were still in a de facto if not de jure state of war with Iraq, remember the no-fly zone et. al. left over from Saddam's invasion of Kuwait? His attempt to assassinate G. H. W. Bush? The decision to finish him off was sound, the attempted nation building afterwards was the true insanity.
Invade Afghanistan and take down the regime that provided aid, comfort and shelter to al Qaeda and Osama ben Laden? You bet, you f-ck with us, past the point we get seriously angry, and we will destroy you, and if needed, through two very different administrations, hunt you down to the ends of the earth and kill you.
civilian armchair heroes debate death and destruction with zero empathy or connection to reality
I'd suggest that you speak for yourself, instead of imputing the worst possible motives on your debating opponents.
just utterly inhuman
Any serious student of history, especially the 20th Century would deny that, it's peace that's "utterly inhuman", war and violence of other types is the natural human condition.
We don't have to like it, but it's silly to deny it.
Anyways, all sides in WWII that were able to bombed the crap out of civilian centers when they were given the chance to do so. That's what total war means.
If any other nation had had nukes, you can bet your ass they would've used them--because in such a war you have no choice other than full mobilization of your warmaking abilities or surrender.
They were bombed 3 days apart.
Nagasaki was unfortunate. It was suppose to be Kokura. But the weather was shit, so they picked 2nd best from the list - Nagasaki.
(November 1st, although as it turns out a typhoon that hit Okinawa would have required delaying it, which in turn would have totally screwed the timetable of Operation Coronet, the invasion of the Honshuu Kantou plain where Tokyo etc. were, due to weather.)