Hiroshima (1946)
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
[0] https://www.amazon.com/American-Caesar-Douglas-MacArthur-188...
Discussion of the writing itself, divorced from the actual substance, would be "academic finger-wagging".
I believe the goal of this writing is to convey to the reader the scale of the bombings and some fraction of their effects on the populace. A secondary aim is to evoke emotion in the reader. I think that's it, I don't see a political aim.
It's facile to say "war is immoral". Inasmuch as anything is immoral, war certainly is. But it's unclear to me how we ought to apply that axiom because it's unclear to me that the world would be better off today if the US hadn't entered the war, or the atomic bombs hadn't been dropped, or if the Allied policy had been something other than pursuit of unconditional surrender.
Nuclear weapons would have been developed whether or not the US developed them. Thankfully, it was the US, and not Germany or Japan - either of those countries would have used them indiscriminately.
Since the development of nuclear weapons, they have been the greatest force for peace in world history. We had two horrific world wars in the space of just 25 years. Now, we're almost 75 years past 1945 without one.
Fingers crossed that sanity prevails and the major powers continue to be dissuaded by MAD.
It invites discussion, without necessarily directing it. Something of a lost art in today's world.
"As for the use of the bomb, she would say, “It was war and we had to expect it.” "
"Others were of the opinion that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians."
We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark. Anyway we ‘think’ we have found a way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexican desert was startling – to put it mildly … This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. He & I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance.
http://download1.libgen.io/ads.php?md5=97FAA80173CF3534DCEEB...
I think the worst thing people could take away is that the nuclear bombs were outliers - the conventional fireboming of Tokyo a little earlier killed more people than Nagasaki and Horishima combined. It was shocking that one bomb could do what we'd previously employed hundreds or thousands to do, but it was just the culmination of several years of intentionally bombing civilians.
Yeah, Humanity does the same thing (history of the moral slide) for the whole 20th C, and each time a new low, "But the other guys did worse last time"..
ps I didn't understand the "I think the worst thing" sentence at all sorry.
"The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement"
Since the planers always knew their goals: the whole city populated with humans (which obviously can't be called a military target more than any city can be) was selected simply to "test" the bomb's destructive power. It's widely documented: a few cities in Japan were therefore intentionally, according to the months long military planing, spared from being bombed with conventional bombs by the US(!) The list of the targets was planned and revised. On the shortest list of the targets was also Kyoto, which was removed from that list only on the intervention of Henry Stimson, the US secretary of war under both Roosevelt and under Truman. Kyoto was just lucky that Stimson was before the war a "tourist" in Kyoto, in 1920's.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in August 6 and 9. But even in July that year "Japan was so beaten that the U.S. continuing further bombing and bombardment was tantamount to flogging a dead horse."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/12/04/commentary/j...
But even in July that year "Japan was so beaten
The restraining effects of moral identity can be weakened by evading any clear recognition of what you are doing.
In his private diary Truman wrote a passage on the bomb. Given the decision he was making, there is something disappointing about the quality of his thought: [diary quote]
The passage gives evidence of the need to escape from any clear, plain statement of what he was about to do. There is the denial of the full human impact of the bomb by seeing the victims as ‘Japs’ and savages. There is the half-suggestion that the bomb may not work anyway: we only ‘think’ we have found a way to split the atom. We are exonerated because we are giving them a warning, even though we know they will ignore it.
Above all, there is the evasion of the fact that an atomic bomb dropped on a city cannot possibly be directed at purely military targets. In Hiroshima civilians outnumbered soldiers by more than six to one. President Truman certainly had some idea of the civilian casualties later. After Nagasaki he stopped the atomic bombing, saying that the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible, and that he did not like the idea of killing ‘all those kids’. Perhaps at some level he knew about this before Hiroshima. If not, his concern for the children was too small to prompt him to find out.
It was not only the President who had to face or evade a moral decision. The scientists who developed the bomb were also faced with a question of conscience. While some confronted it, others took refuge in evasion.
But those that actually decided carefully planned to kill the whole cities, for a long time, and only “to see the bomb’s power.”
Most of the scientists objected.
It's all about context. At that point in history, the Japanese forces had already murdered millions of non-Japanese. Furthermore, firebombing campaigns on Japan caused way more civilian casualties than the atomic bombs. The Japanese leadership was ready to sacrifice millions in a possible ground invasion. Fortunately, the war stopped at "only" two atomic bombs, there were more to come...
Not for a while, I think. We only had two bombs at the time. IIRC it would have taken months (weeks?) to build another. The implication that we could just keep dropping a bomb every three days until surrender was a bluff, albeit a very strong bluff.
It wasn't that far off:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
This point in particular comes up a lot , but there is scant actual evidence for it. By this point in the war, the constant firebombing had destroyed any sort of infrastructure allowing for such a strong defense. Contemporary US military estimates of a ground invasion get nowhere near those casualty numbers
There is scant evidence for this (honest question)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_K...
> Contemporary US military estimates of a ground invasion get nowhere near those casualty numbers
That's pretty irrelevant, because hindsight is 20/20. Given the conduct of Japanese in the war, it wouldn't have seemed implausible at the time. The soviets sacrificed millions of their people to repel the Nazis.
I’m not trying to downplay the horror of the nuclear bombings. I’m just upplaying (is that a word?) the rest of the war.
Conventional warfare against near peer enemy is absolutely horrifying for civilians. Estimated direct or indirect civilian casualties almost always exceed military casualties by large margin. How much difference does 'did not directly target' has when you know the end result. It does not help that modern military propaganda often describes the job of infantry "saving lives" without any sense of irony.
Sounds weird, but if you come out of it really emotionally affected, go get some chocolate from their cafe and take a break. Helps your body recover.
We didn’t do Hiroshima and now I also regret that.
The people and country are beautiful and the legacy of WW2 makes me very sad.
Weird comparison to the Newseum. In hindsight, I also had a similar reaction.
1: No sitting US President has ever visited the city; only one previous president had been there (Sorry I can't recall if that was Ford or Carter). 2: The center or 'target' of the drop was a hospital and most of its steel structure remained intact. 3: Nature seemed fine; trees were normal, birds were flying, and of course plenty of cats just hanging about (which is a thing anywhere you go in Japan it seems).
Nagasaki is more solemn, the ground zero area has rubble visible in a glass display area, and ruins of a brick pillar covered with scorch marks from the historic Urakami Christian Church
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/asia/text-of-presid...
When I visited Hiroshima, it stood out to me that there were no old trees anywhere. I had just come from Kyoto, so the difference felt very apparent.
I wonder if Mr. Gropper survived the war to know that the building survived (the blast) and his actions were not in vain.
I find this video more convincing, because most things produced by Asian people condemning Japanese war crime during wwii is usually not well received: https://youtu.be/lnAC-Y9p_sY
This is not necessarily propaganda. But the author sure forget who caused this tragedy and who should be held responsible. They only saw the human tragedy suffered by people in Hiroshima. And trying to depict a scenarios that the suffering is general human tragedy.
Of course, it’s not. It’s a tragedy of normal citizens fell for the war propaganda, and willingly start and continue an atrocious war crime against Asian and other peiceful living people.
Japanese culture before wwii in general is on the more brutal and inhuman side on the world culture spectrum.
The romanticized Japanese scenarios in American pop culture is pretty much a product of the entertainment industry, as this op states.
After watching it, I found myself challenged to explain why the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered worse.
It's here if you haven't seen it yet.
Whether justified or not, there were a lot of "reasons" for the use of the bomb that have been forgotten or are not adequately understood today. Just for starters:
- Many of the Manhattan Project scientists were motivated to build the bomb before the Nazis. Indeed, this seems to be one of the single biggest reasons for participation in the project. When it finally came out that the Germans were far behind and posed no real threat, a significant number of scientists quit entirely.
- The Soviets were on the brink of invading Japan and one of the "reasons" for the use of the atomic weapons was as a show of force / deterrent against the Soviets, in anticipation of the upcoming Cold War.
- The timeline was longer than I had known. Little Boy was dropped on August 6. Fat Man was dropped 3 days later, the same day that the Soviets declared war on Japan. The Japanese didn't surrender until August 15, six days later. The book mentioned that many historians think the Japanese were motivated to surrender more by the Soviet threat of invasion than by the atomic bombings.
In any case, it's a fascinating story that I think any technically-minded person would enjoy reading.
Soviet invasion of Japan was discussed in detail on Yalta conference. Don't you think it was a little too late to deter Soviets by bombing Japan?
> The book mentioned that many historians think the Japanese were motivated to surrender more by the Soviet threat of invasion than by the atomic bombings.
Japanese emperor mentioned both of them when he addressed the nation. I wonder why those historians wasn't aware of that.
This is a horrific crime against humanity that this happened not once, but twice. Two bombs that killed ~250,000 people.
The USA should be building monuments as a reminder of how they should never let it happen again. Instead, they are taught that it was necessary to end the war.
And yes, this weapon put an end to the massive spilling of blood during WW2 in Japan. In case you didn't read the story before writing this comment here's the quote that reinforces what the reality for the soldiers there would have been: > "In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill, life for life; the soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs. They were silent and dazed."
They very much intended to make it a long, slow, bloody combat until this episode.
Aside from that thing called radiation, the problem here is that the U.S. feels entitled to tell other nations who can/can't have nuclear arms, yet it is the only one to have used it in a war.
Have you heard of "unexploded ordnance"? It's fallout that all conventional weapons become when they fail to explode, and unlike fallout it never actually goes away until someone digs it up. They come in many sizes; it either blows up you and the entire city block (if it's a larger bomb), or maybe just you and the guy standing next to you (if it's a cluster bomb unit or a mortar shell), or maybe it just takes your legs off (if it's a mine or a hand grenade).
Europeans (Germans and French in particular), Africans, and people in certain Southeast Asian countries are very familiar with this concept; there has fortunately been no armed conflict on North American soil at a technology level that generates such fallout. The people of France will have to live for at least the next thousand years with the Zone Rouge (for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge), while not only have Hiroshima and Nagasaki been completely rebuilt but Ground Zero is perfectly habitable to the point of being an active tourist attraction.
As far as nuclear arms control goes, the most intellectually honest lens with which to view it is through standard gun control with the nation-state as the individual actor; if that view is that the gun should be restricted to higher authorities only (and that it is hazardous to have too many in the hands of the common citizen/state), then the fact that the US feels entitled to tell others who should and shouldn't have a gun is entirely consistent with that. Perhaps that authority can't be held to account (because they have a gun and all you have is a promise that it won't be abused), but that's the trade-off.
Perhaps the issue is that nuclear weapons aren't sufficiently easy to acquire; nations that are actually opposed to the American sphere of influence would then be better able to resist both overt and covert bullying by said Americans. (Whether or not that bullying results in a net positive for humanity is left as an exercise for the reader.)
Holy crap!
European here, thanks for presuming otherwise. Chernobyl affected not only people directly near the blast, but in Norway!
Yes, unexplored WWII bombs are a huge problem, which is however not a counter to nuclear fallout being disastrous, not just for people directly sitting on the bombs, but for birth defects etc.
Chemical weapons are considered worse for this very reason, even if they cause less direct causalities than conventional ones.
My biggest problem with the U.S. using nuclear weapons is, as I said, it then going around and telling other nations that they can't have them, as they may(!) use them.
Plus, it's a horrible way to die. Dying because you have a building fall on you, or because a bullet goes through your body, is a thing. Dying because your skin is melting but you can't see it because you got blind after that violent explosion you didn't even watch, and don't even understand what happens because the attack was 10km away, is another.
That's late stage WW2, that was not specific to the nuclear bomb. As WW2 turned both trying to destroy the industry of the enemy and demoralize the general population, carpet bombing was seen as an effective method to do so.
Even though it did achieve the former, it didn't achieve the latter. So it's arguable if it even shortened the war in Europe.
> Plus, it's a horrible way to die. [...]
You should read some accounts of the bombing of e.g. Tokyo or Hamburg. Dying to incendiary bombs is not a nicer way to die.
That is not what we are taught.
What we are taught is that it was a terrible evil that was judged to be the better option of two evils. This is still potentially not true, and in hindsight with knowledge that the Japanese were not nearly as stubborn as we thought they were, it looks terrible. But these are luxuries afforded to people with the Internet and decades of time to analyze the situation that President Truman did not have.
Only idiots in America think that it was necessary to end the war. Quit knocking down strawmen.
There's no evidence that anyone assumed it was the only way. It was simply a show of force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
That said, this doesn't really excuse dropping not one but two bombs on civilian centers. Dropping one a stone's throw from Tokyo (say, the Boso or Izu peninsulas) would likely have made the point as effectively and with less casualties.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
There was also a plenty of evidence that the U.S. wanted to "test" the bomb in a real-world scenario and to demonstrate its military might to a much wider audience than just Japan.
Ascribe whatever nefarious motive you want. Those two bombs brought about the end of the war with a lot less casualties (on both sides) than the runner up option (invasion).
You cannot know if a bloody invasion was the only other option. Perhaps doing a test and 'leaking' to the press that Japan was next would work too? Or bombing a non densely populated area?
Also, you simply can't count the causalities of nuclear bombs the same way as conventional ones, since there will be related deaths for generations; increased cancer rates, birth defects etc.
Well that was the shovel ready option that they were actively preparing for. IIRC it was scheduled for November so unless some other unexpected circumstance was going to force the Japanese into surrendering before then the invasion was going to happen.
>Or bombing a non densely populated area?
Considered and ruled out in 1945
>Also, you simply can't count the causalities of nuclear bombs the same way as conventional ones
Yes you can. It's done the same way. Start at zero and go up.
>since there will be related deaths for generations; increased cancer rates, birth defects etc.
This is only an issue for the people who survived the bomb first hand. It's not like their grandkids are going to suffer radiation sickness.
I'm not sure if I'm misinterpreting your tone but your comment reeks of being in an ivory tower and out of touch. There was every indication (Iwo Jima and Okinawa to name two) that the Japanese were going to fight to the last man on the home islands. There was a Japanese army running around beheading everyone in China. The American blockade was fighting off kamikaze attacks regularly. They could have firebombed those cities if they wanted but that wouldn't have sent the same message to Japanese leadership.
Every day the war continued cost lives. Using atomic weapons and ending the war sooner was well worth the extra cancer. I seriously cannot fathom the kind of ideology or belief system that leads one to conclude otherwise.
Huh? No, not radiation sickness as such, but future generations being more prone to have cancer, being born with defects and such. This isn't that hard.
Also, you reply reeks of thinking that I accept the premise that the U.S. seriously considered other options and ruled them out in the first place. It's pretty evident that they wanted to see if the bomb really works and even avoided bombing with conventional weapons, so they may use the nuclear option later.
I know this doesn't sound good and doesn't fit into the simplistic narrative everyone wants to imagine, but that's not my problem.
This[1] sounds like "serious consideration" to me.
The Emperor basically wanted to still be Emperor after the war, which we ensured anyway, had we given such assurances prior, an invasion might not have been necessary at all. The Japanese were already discussing surrender.
Opinion of somebody who was there: "[...] the 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and that wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. "
And if you think that such use of nuclear weapons would be well considered, note that nukes were practically ready for Vietnam, because apparently Napalm wasn't enough.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/us-nearly-used-...
This is a bit like forgiving Nazis because they did not have the internet to read about Jews that they are not so evil.
Its very much possible the Japan would have surrendered a few months later anyway if the US does keeps up the sea blockade and does a few more normal bombing runs.
NOTHING justifies killing 200.000 civilians, its a war crime.
What we do know as a fact - which seems to be glossed over by a lot of people - is that the Emperor specifically mentioned the bomb in his surrender speech as one of the reasons why they were surrendering.
As for why the cold harsh reality of this is ignored/amended, that is pretty easy to understand. You can see it in history of every single country, mine included. Dark parts of the past are not taught at school, and if they are usually in very subjective way. No country would ever approve teaching material that would paint it in any bad way if it can be omitted (but I presume Germany can't really avoid cold harsh look at the topic of WW II for example).
One of the reason I am not fan of any form of stronger patriotism (apart from being 'loyalty to the real estate') - probably no country out there deserves to be smug about itself. I am looking at you France, US, Britain, Russia, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal etc etc. A bit of humility and self-criticism would benefit us all. Something in the vein of recognizing the mistakes of the past, so next generations can actually learn the hard lessons and try avoid them.
I'm sure they could find a way to avoid it. From what I've heard, talking to German citizens, Germany has made the choice to confront their history head-on, with no sugar-coating. They don't protect small children from learning about it. Everyone knows.
Patriotism is about loving the nation for good.
Japan is invading and killing tens of millions in Asia.
I find your use of patriotism disturbing as a Chinese. That implies these people willing kill my ancestors because of their patriotism, and supposedly those deeds are less condemnable...
Civilian deaths related to the second Iraq war?
- Between 155,923 and 174,355 (or if counting 2011-2017, 175,792 to 196,572)
Civilian deaths caused by US and SV in Vietnam massacres?
- Between 4,000 and 10,000, or 110,000 to 310,000 (Maybe double that, depending
on how you count which people were killed and for what reasons)
Native American Genocide?
- Between 10 million and 114 milllion killed
Enslavement and Transportation of Africans?
- Between 10.7 million and 12.5 million
Why would a country that has done terrible things try to remember any of that, unless a more powerful country forced them to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic...
Here's a light introduction to some of the atrocities committed by the criminals in this government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
Once these criminals attacked the US in Hawaii and the Philippines, it set a series of events in motion. Their unwillingness to stop their criminal activities was eventually met with decisive force.
If you want to blame anyone, blame the government of Japan.
It's not the fault of the US that the government of Japan militarized their whole society and literally made the whole of the country a military target.
Japan wanted to be left alone. Western powers took it to war to force it to their will.
Yeah, left alone to create the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperit...).
You're welcome to ask the various Asian nations of that region whether they thought that was a good thing but I doubt you'd like the response.
In other words, that's a century later...
[0] Also known as the "two wrongs make a right" fallacy. See https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFalla...
This is exactly the sort of collectivist thinking that makes it possible to have WWIII. When you can disregard fundamental human dignity based on the actions of a government, you've already lost.
Wait, maybe rewind this a little? I know that the European settlers that created the US took the continental land from the natives, but how did they end up with claims to Hawaii and the Philippines in the first place?
Your response was "what about Japanese war crimes?"
Please stay on topic.
The US being in the Philippines and Hawaii has nothing to do with Hiroshima, other than the US being there when Japan attacked. Japan attacked the wrong country and this resulted in decisive force being used against them.
And, sorry, "whataboutism" is a cheap cop-out. Historical incidents should be seen in context, not just as isolated finger pointing (and always from one side to the other).
Who would they get flak from? They are the top dog. They can point fingers on others for even thinking of having nukes, invade countries that don't have nukes, and generally do as it pleases. And they can always say they did it to end the war sooner (which of course anyone can use to justify any such mass civilian killing in a war).
Just ask yourself, why are there all these crooked foreign leaders that make a living of antagonizing the US? If the US is really so powerful because of its nukes, why don't they just surrender?
Yeah, and there's also limits due to physical laws and other such things. I thought "does as it pleases" covered things like war costs.
>Also, virtually of the foreign interventions done by the US in the last decades have been failures.
Depends on their purpose. To destabilize a region, or prevent them from dealing with euro currency and such, they worked well.
>Just ask yourself, why are there all these crooked foreign leaders that make a living of antagonizing the US? If the US is really so powerful because of its nukes, why don't they just surrender?
Because they have this thing called dignity.
Perhaps the general feeling is, when you've already gone to that extent, and the extremes and excesses of WWII in general, which killed about 60,000,000[2] in total, about 3% of the 1940 world population, another 100,000 odd doesn't make much difference.
Three percent of global population today would be about 231,000,000 people.
The fact that the US hangs around a country aftet wars to help rebuild and control/stabilize the postwar government should also be considered. For future security,vengeance and a lesson to others it would be the typical route to commit genoicide and eradicate the germans,japanese and italians or at least permanently displace them from their homeland (which is what happens historically).
The lesson here isn't how the US should or shouldn't have used nukes or how terrible the Japanese and Germans were. The lesson behind ww2 is it shouldn't happen again. Period.
This is what happens in full on wars. Drill into your childrens minds the horrors of war so they're careful to never let it happen again. We now have the US,Russia and China yet again setting themselves on a global collision course. Americans don't know ww2 well enough to avert a repeat of it. They elect hitler like madmen,extremists and are perfecectly with spending 20% of the gdp on defence in times of peace. Russians who suffered more than americans in ww2 support a trigger happy egotistical leader. Horrors of ww2 should be shown to children with explicit detail. We need adults that understand what war means.
I'll tell you another thing,the US and most nuclear powers would not hesitate to change the rules and use a nuke again to avert losing a war. First use policy only applies when you're not getting invaded or a significant number of civilians killed.
Another way of looking at it is not as the first nuclear bombing but as the last bombing of the second world war. In that context, even the deadlier of the two, Hiroshima, doesn't seem any worse than the strategic bombing in the rest of the war. Not just Tokyo and other Japanese cities, but the bombing raids on Germany, the Blitz in the UK, not to mention the vast horrors inflicted on civilians in Eastern Europe and in China. This context also explains why the last explicit order to use the bombs was weeks before they were dropped and came from General Groves, while there was some high level discussion about targets, the prosecution of the war was a purely military matter.
Of course in retrospect, people began to see nuclear weapons as uniquely horrible, but that's really only because they became so powerful and so numerous.
Not even that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Atomic_bomb...:
on 14 August […] 828 B-29s escorted by 186 fighters (for a total of 1,014 aircraft) were dispatched; during the day precision raids were made against targets at Iwakuni, Osaka and Tokoyama and at night the cities of Kumagaya and Isesaki were firebombed.
Yes the bomb is bad but it is by far not the worse thing that a government has done to the people of another or its own.
The Japanese caused somewhere between 17 and 22 million civilian deaths in China alone in that era according to Wikipedia, nearly double the estimate for even the German Holocaust. And that doesn't include what they did to other nations in Asia.
By your logic, Japan should have a memorial on every street corner, yet they don't.
Speaking of nuclear we had nuclear meltdown in Fukushima a while ago.