Comment by woodman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by woodman | Hacker News Reader

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Note: The following is written from the perspective of an individual who accepts that states are necessary, and that war is justifiable. This isn't something I personally believe, but something that the vast majority of people do - not just Americans.

I don't remember any talking points being taught to me as a child, but I guess that would be the case with any good brainwashing. I am familiar with the justifications for targeting Japanese civilians for conventional and nuclear bombing though, something along the lines of Japan being prepared for total war - down to child combatants with sharpened sticks. In war you have two options for ending hostilities, complete annihilation or political resolution (surrender, cease fire, etc). If Japan went into total war mode, and they made it clear that they would if necessary, then they remove the political resolution option. So with that in mind, it is not a stretch to say that firebombing and nuking hundreds of thousands saved millions of Japanese lives.

Consider the fact that this firebombing occurred 1945-03-09, and the Japanese were still wanting to fight for another five months, until the second atomic bomb drop on 1945-08-09. The only thing that brought them to the table was the idea that their enemy possessed a weapon where a single bomb could level a city, they had no idea how many atomic bombs existed.

> The only thing that brought them to the table was the idea that their enemy possessed a weapon where a single bomb could level a city

Utterly wrong. This has been shown many times that the A-bomb was not the decisive part. It was the upcoming involvement of Russians on the Japanese front. Please stop spreading explanations for 5-years olds.

Not sure why you're being downvoted, this is widely accepted that both the bomb and the soviet invasion had equivalent weight in their surrender, with some historians saying the soviet declaration of war was more important.

To add on that, at the time of the surrender, the long term effect of the bomb was not known to the japanese and as such the nuclear bombing wasn't the worst city bombing they suffered, neither in terms of infrastructure damage or loss of life.

Some more information for those interested

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_h...

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2y98yc/did_th...

> "Not sure why you're being downvoted"

The "5 year old" comment probably has something to do with it. HN doesn't tend to downvote people into the gray just because they are saying something that other people disagree with, unless the comment is also not particularly civil.

Yes, they do. See my comment near the top. Nothing disrespectful about it, just opinionated.

I see only two of your comments in recent history are downvoted into the gray:

This one is not civil, as it personally attacks another commenter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9169613 "That says a lot about you."

This one is in defense of the less-than-civil comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9169781

I say things that many people disagree with all the time on HN, but pretty much the only times that I am downvoted into the gray are when I am not civil. For instance, the only comment of mine that has been grayed in this discussion is this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9169426 That comment is little more than a personal attack, and was therefore downvoted.

> this is widely accepted that both the bomb and the soviet invasion had equivalent weight in their surrender

I seem to recall that from the archived discussions between the officials at power at the time, the Russian invasion wa the key topic at hand to capitulate before any soviet forces landed.

It occurs to me that by asserting that the American nuclear bombardment was not justifiable because the Japanese were not sufficiently terrified of it but were sufficiently terrified of a Russian invasion, we are saying something quite extreme about the nature of an invading Russian army.

Does anybody know what narrative is taught in Russian schools to Russian children?

Japan had been allied to Germany. The Wehrmacht had been one of the most effective fighting forces the world has ever known. The Imperial Japanese Army had been formed on the Prussian model back in the 19th century.

The German Wehrmacht had just been defeated by the Soviet Army three months earlier.

Also, the Japanese army had already tried and failed to defeat the Soviet army in 1939. In fact, that's how Zhukov got his first Hero of the Soviet Union award. That was in 1939, before the massive Soviet arms buildup, before the dissipation of Japanese strength in the Pacific.

A Japanese general would have to be delusional to think that he could hold out against the Soviets in 1945.

So Japan's surrender, six days later, was just a coincidence? Maybe if you shared one of the "many" demonstrations that the "A-bomb was not the decisive part", we could weigh that against the strange timing of the whole thing.

> So Japan's surrender, six days later, was just a coincidence?

Japan had been already utterly destroyed by that time, the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far from the most deadly bombings at that time. Let me remind that most large cities had been already razed to the ground. You are completely missing out the context of the time and giving way too much importance to the nukes.

> ... the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were far from the most deadly bombings at that time.

That is my point exactly. Those cities were selected for the purpose of a technological demonstration, not body count. I thought I made it clear in mentioning the time span between firebombing and surrender that Japan was not super concerned about body count, it was more about maintaining sovereignty following eventual defeat. The US demonstrated a technology that would allow it to annihilate Japan without having to shoot every child holding a stick. That would make total war, and the hope of war weariness in your enemy, completely pointless.

My understanding has always been that the bombings were a "tech demo," but unlike your claim they were not designed to force Japan to surrender (which was already assumed).

Rather, they demonstrated not only this new capability of the United States, but perhaps more importantly they demonstrated the country's willingness to inflict massive civilian casualties in an ostentatious display of the capability.

Ultimately, the bombings were intended to frighten the entire world in submission, providing leverage that was used to construct the United States empire following the war.

They were indeeded a "tech demo", not intended to scare Japan which was already on the edge of capitulation, but to the Russians to show them that the US would have the upper hand for the post-war negotiations.

Perhaps you can provide the authoritative reference that substantiates your view. From what I have read, some historians believe that the soviet invasion was partly responsible for the timing of the surrender, but it's contribution is difficult to know. These events happened in short order. Unless you have a source from the Imperial Army or government that documents the decision making, it's all speculation. Also, I find it interesting that the soviet military waited for the second bomb before invading. Were they being opportunistic?

Also incorrect. The Atomic bomb and the Soviet invasion of Japan held China where both devestating. But as D.M Giangreco documents in "Hell to Pay", at the time, the "Peace Party" in the cabinet, most notably Kido, felt that the Atomic bomb was exactly what they needed to end the war. Kido and others in the peace party literally described it as "a gift from heaven".

The notion that Japan refused peace until it was nuked is incorrect. Japan had tried to begin peace talks in January, but they were ignored by the Allies[1]

[1]: http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1945/08/19/page/1/article...

Incorrect. Wikipedia has a decent overview of what really occurred with the Japanese overtures:

Satō advised Tōgō that in reality, "unconditional surrender or terms closely equivalent thereto" was all that Japan could expect. Moreover, in response to Molotov's requests for specific proposals, Satō suggested that Tōgō's messages were not "clear about the views of the Government and the Military with regard to the termination of the war," thus questioning whether Tōgō's initiative was supported by the key elements of Japan's power structure.[47]

On July 17, Tōgō responded:

Although the directing powers, and the government as well, are convinced that our war strength still can deliver considerable blows to the enemy, we are unable to feel absolutely secure peace of mind ... Please bear particularly in mind, however, that we are not seeking the Russians' mediation for anything like an unconditional surrender.[48]

In reply, Satō clarified:

It goes without saying that in my earlier message calling for unconditional surrender or closely equivalent terms, I made an exception of the question of preserving [the imperial family].[49]

On July 21, speaking in the name of the cabinet, Tōgō repeated:

With regard to unconditional surrender we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatever. The Allies read this in realtime. Japan was not ready to accept any sort of unconditional surrender. More the point, America and Europe had just finished a brutal war in Europe. The point of view then was that the war occurred because Germany had no truly been defeated in World War I. All where concerned with not seeing another world war.

Very few people will see it since the OP was flagkilled, but this post you wrote in the other thread was very nice:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9172061

You start by claiming my comment was incorrect, but I don't see a refutation that the Allies were unwilling to negotiate peace with Japan in your response. In fact, you seem to confirm it.

Maybe your confusion stems from something you said:

> Japan was not ready to accept any sort of unconditional surrender.

There is only one sort of unconditional surrender, that is why it's called unconditional. The Allies, the US in particular, were not interested in negotiating peace with Japan. They were not willing to settle for anything less than Japan's total submission to them, which is why they ignored Japan's overtures to negotiating peace in January 1945. Not, as you naively seem to be believe, because they were "concerned with not seeing another world war", but because the US realised it had the might to do so, and wanted to assert itself as a global military power. Negotiating with Japan would have implied that the US had doubts about their own capacity to wage war. You seem to be aware of this, as you point out in your other comment that was linked to earlier:

> Japan counted on the vast distance between San Fransisco and Tokyo to protect them from the horrors that they had unleashed on China, the Philippians and countless other peoples in the Southeastern Pacific. They were wrong.

They were indeed wrong, but the US had to prove it to them and to the rest of the world, which is what they did by firebombing Tokyo and nuking H. and N.

Japan was not interested in any outcome that didn't preserve their empire in China. that was non-negotiable to them.

In addition, as noted above, this only was the proposal from the peace party.

My belief in the United States "being concerned about another war in 20 years" is well founded and documented. Please see the personal memoirs of Marshall for example.

Sadly yes, the United States did need to prove to them, something that very basic laws of economics should have revealed - they had no shot whatsoever, at any point, in winning a war against the United States if total mobilization came into play.

> Japan was not interested in any outcome that didn't preserve their empire in China. that was non-negotiable to them.

That is not true according to the article by Walter Trohan I quoted above[1]. From that article:

> 4. [Japanese] relinquishment of Manchuria, Korea and Formosa, as well as all territory seized during the war.

This peace proposal was virtually identical to the one Japan ended up accepting. The only difference was that it did not offer the surrender of the person of the emperor.

The veracity of this proposal has never been questioned or denied:

> The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

(Harry Elmer Barnes, "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe", National Review, 10 May 1958)

So there is no reason to doubt it.

As for your belief that the US was concerned about another war in 20 years, I am aware that this commonplace ideological piece of rhetoric is very well documented. But let's take it a face value. Let's say we believe that the real reason the US chose to firebomb Tokyo and burn to death around 100,000 people, mostly children, elderly and caretakers was to save lives by preventing another war in the next 20 years. The very least you could say is that it didn't work very well: the US was fighting another war in Korea 5 years later, Cuba 16 years later and Vietnam 20 years later. And yet the rhetoric keeps coming back, as justification for every single one of these events. So if fighting wars doesn't actually seem to prevent any killings, but always warrants more wars, why not change tactics? Why not try a different approach, for example a game of rock-paper-scissors between world leaders? The answer is that wars do indeed work for the purpose they are fought for. But this purpose is not preventing other wars, as ideology would have you believe, but instead to establish the might of the state in the general competition of states for power and domination. And populations are simply the means by which states achieve this purpose: their own population as productive force for the war machine and canon fodder; and the enemy's population as evidence of the state's power, in the form of number of casualties. The more you kill, the better.

[1]: http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1945/08/19/page/1/article...

> The only thing that brought them to the table was the idea that their enemy possessed a weapon where a single bomb could level a city, they had no idea how many atomic bombs existed.

I agree with most of your post, but not this one.

The other major factor was that the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Until that point, the Soviets had led Japan to believe it would be possible to negotiate a peace through them.

I admit that I don't know a great deal about the Soviet angle, but it doesn't seem to logically fit. By that I mean: why would the Japanese be more afraid of a Soviet invasion than an American invasion? I know that Japanese soldiers had been trained to believe that Americans would retreat in the face of Japanese force, and that the Japanese had a pretty negative experience in dealing with the Soviet military. But I'd think that by the end of the Pacific war the Japanese would have been keenly aware of the fact that the Americans were not running away - they preparing to invade the homeland.

The only way I can logically fit the Soviet angle in is if Japan thought that they might be able to divide the Allies with a Soviet peace treaty. It would have been a real long shot, but not uncharacteristic of them at that time.

Except that Japan repeatedly tried to make peace before the atomic bombings, and if the US hadn't been so determined that it be an unconditional surrender and been willing to negotiate, they could have ended the war before that, without any need to even think about invasion. So it was an evil slaughter.

> ... they could have ended the war before that, without any need to even think about invasion.

There is no way to know that without knowing the conditions of surrender that Japan had in mind. I have a feeling that the conditions would have been as well reasoned as an island nation attacking an industrial powerhouse with the natural resources of an entire continent :)

Such as the US guaranteeing that the Emperor stays in power, which they allowed after the war anyway? http://www.spectacle.org/696/long.html

And what is that smile for, anyway? Do you think this is funny?

> Such as the US guaranteeing that the Emperor stays in power, which they allowed after the war anyway?

"the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers"

> And what is that smile for, anyway? Do you think this is funny?

Yup, because you just demonstrated the irrationality that I was hinting at: what is an emperor who is subservient to a foreign power? Not an emperor.

So the US killed 500,000 civilians because they didn't weren't willing to negotiate, and you think that that's funny. That says a lot about you.

> So the US killed 500,000 civilians because they didn't weren't willing to negotiate

That is debatable, but not by you, as you seem to be missing the point. Negotiating with irrational actors is risky - burning them to death, or until they say uncle, is pretty safe.

> ... and you think that that's funny. That says a lot about you.

I have to admit, watching a frustrated care troll twist does put a smile on my face - but it gets old fast. The topic at hand is logical justification, so appeals to emotion are comically out of place here.

> watching a frustrated care troll twist

What are you talking about?

> Negotiating with irrational actors is risky

They never even tried it.

I'll make this simple. The only justification for the fire bombings and nuclear bombings that has any possible merit is that they were necessary to end the war. However, the US never even tried to negotiate, nor did they try to communicate to the Japanese that they would be willing to allow the Emperor to remain nominally in power. They could have used that to end the war far sooner.

So how could the bombings possibly be necessary to end the war when the war might have been ended by other means? I'm sure you'll say that that wouldn't have worked, but how would you know? The lack of any attempt shows that the US wasn't interested in ending the war: they wanted revenge, and therefore the bombings were not justified.

> The only justification for the fire bombings and nuclear bombings that has any possible merit is that they were necessary to end the war.

That doesn't work in real life. In order to know what level of force is necessary, one has to have a perfect knowledge of the opposition. That isn't possible, so you always respond with more force than you think in necessary - overengineering the carnage.

> So how could the bombings possibly be necessary to end the war when the war might have been ended by other means?

If we are going to play the what if game, why stop at the firebombs? What if Japan didn't attack? What if the US didn't apply economic pressure? What if Japan didn't stomp all over Asia? The what if game is pretty boring.

> That doesn't work in real life. In order to know what level of force is necessary, one has to have a perfect knowledge of the opposition. That isn't possible, so you always respond with more force than you think in necessary - overengineering the carnage.

That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads to global nuclear annihilation, and when that consequence became clear, intelligent people finally realized how wrong it is.

But your argument is wrong anyhow. Either you're trying to end the war, or you're not. If you are, you try all avenues, including negotiation. If you don't try negotiation, you aren't trying to end the war, you're trying to prolong it. The US leadership knew they couldn't lose at that point, so they weren't trying to end it.

> The what if game is pretty boring.

It sure is when you lose right away, due to the US never trying to negotiate. Earlier you said that it was "risky" to do so. How?

And It doesn't matter that we don't know what would have happened if the US had attempted negotiations with Japan. It only matters that they never did.

> That's exactly the kind of thinking that leads to global nuclear annihilation ...

That is the kind of thinking that ends wars. Compare the results of this method in WWII to the results of modern warfare, where force is much more restrained.

> Either you're trying to end the war, or you're not.

It isn't as simple as that, you aren't just trying to end the war - you are trying to end the war while maximizing your return on blood and treasure. If your goal is to completely dismantle the enemy's war machine, and head off another war with them in a few years, then you are most likely going to want an unconditional surrender. So if your enemy announces that isn't in the cards, then why bother with negotiation?

> Earlier you said that it was "risky" to do so. How?

Because irrational actors can't be understood, you can't negotiate without understanding.

> It only matters that they never did.

I don't try to negotiate with salesmen when they announce a hard price, the resulting lack of negotiation is on them - not me.

An appeal to emotion is not out of place here. This is not a simple matter of "logical justification", there's no logical axiomatic framework that deals well with ethics. So appeal to purely "logical" justification is out of place here, sadly, not comically though.

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