We Nuked Japan -- Was It Necessary/Justified?

Started by tbone0106, June 28, 2012, 09:19:27 PM

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Solar

Quote from: Shooterman on June 29, 2012, 08:41:25 AM
Still not the same, Solar, in my opinion. Hirohito was the boy emperor, but the power really was in the hands of the militarist, mostly the Army that still embraced the old school of the Sumarai. Yamamoto was probably the only sane one in the crowd and he was Navy.
But it was their undying loyalty to the Emperor that made every civilian a threat.
Giles explained it quite well, they were planning on using children as weapons.
In truth, the Japanese were acting like a caged animal and was willing to sacrifice the very last person in hopes of staying off complete defeat.

The bomb was and always be the right decision.
The second one clinched and proved the point.
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kramarat

It has to be looked at in perspective too.

It's easy to look back, from now, and say how horrible it was to incinerate thousands of civilians........................but that wasn't the thought process that was going on at the time. The thought process was, "Let's end this damned war."

Mission accomplished.

tbone0106

At least one history I've read (actually one of the best, but I can't locate it right now) claims that Japan was near surrender without the A-bombs. Their navy had been essentially wiped out and their foreign conquests mostly taken away from them. The US Navy had the islands effectively blockaded, and many Japanese, especially in the cities, were on the edge of starvation. LeMay's B-29s were flying in at will, dropping incendiaries by the planeload and killing as many as 100,000 people in a single raid.

As early as June, the Japanese were talking to the Soviets (with whom they had a neutrality pact) about acting as a mediator for a negotiated surrender. That same month, Hirohito instructed his cabinet ministers to find a way to end the war ASAP. It's not like they thought they still had a shot at winning.

Still, this is 20-20 hindsight, and we certainly didn't know some of these things at the time. Based on what we DID know, dropping the A-bombs was a smart thing to do.

Solar

Quote from: tbone0106 on June 29, 2012, 09:52:22 AM
At least one history I've read (actually one of the best, but I can't locate it right now) claims that Japan was near surrender without the A-bombs. Their navy had been essentially wiped out and their foreign conquests mostly taken away from them. The US Navy had the islands effectively blockaded, and many Japanese, especially in the cities, were on the edge of starvation. LeMay's B-29s were flying in at will, dropping incendiaries by the planeload and killing as many as 100,000 people in a single raid.

As early as June, the Japanese were talking to the Soviets (with whom they had a neutrality pact) about acting as a mediator for a negotiated surrender. That same month, Hirohito instructed his cabinet ministers to find a way to end the war ASAP. It's not like they thought they still had a shot at winning.

Still, this is 20-20 hindsight, and we certainly didn't know some of these things at the time. Based on what we DID know, dropping the A-bombs was a smart thing to do.
Yet there was no negotiating needed, they surrendered in full under our terms, terms that made them one of the most prosperous nations in the world.

With that said, if they were so willing to negotiate surrender, why did they keep fighting after the first bomb?I think your historian wanted to see a reality of his choosing, the war was calculated to have possibly lasted another year, with heavy losses on both sides.

The bomb made it possible to get a complete surrender, not a give and take like we do today.
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Solar

Was it the right decision/ You decide.

Why did the United States drop the bomb when it did? On July 29, a U.S. Navy ship, the Indianapolis, was sunk and 883 lives were lost. A U.S. invasion of Southeast Asia was scheduled for September 6, in which case, it was likely that 100,000 British, Dutch, and American Prisoners of War would be executed by the Japanese.

Decrypted Japanese military cables indicated that Japan was building-up its defenses in preparation for an American invasion, and many Japanese leaders testified that they were confident that they could have stopped at least the first wave of an American invasion. Decoded diplomatic cables indicated that Japan's leaders were seeking to persuade the Soviet Union to negotiate an armistice on favorable terms that would have allowed Japan to retain conquered territory. A three-time Japanese premier, Prince Konoye Fumimaro, said that had the atomic bombs not been dropped, the war would have continued into 1946: "The army had dug themselves caves in the mountains and their idea of fighting on was fighting from every little hole or rock in the mountains."
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=541

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mdgiles

Does anyone believe that if the Japanese had succeeded in perfecting a device in July of 1945, that there wouldn't have been a suicide submarine going off in some west coast city by August?
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!

kramarat

Quote from: mdgiles on June 29, 2012, 02:39:01 PM
Does anyone believe that if the Japanese had succeeded in perfecting a device in July of 1945, that there wouldn't have been a suicide submarine going off in some west coast city by August?

They were doing everything they could think of, to kill US civilians. If they had the A-bomb, they wouldn't have thought twice about using it.

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=932

ShadowBear12

Dropping the bomb was the most humanitarian thing possible.  Thank God Truman and his advisers did not have confused pacifist thoughts about it.  They saved so many young American lives ... young people who did not ask for the war or have any idea why they were there. 
I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences,
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses,
And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences.

kramarat

Quote from: ShadowBear12 on June 29, 2012, 04:22:09 PM
Dropping the bomb was the most humanitarian thing possible.  Thank God Truman and his advisers did not have confused pacifist thoughts about it.  They saved so many young American lives ... young people who did not ask for the war or have any idea why they were there.

I believe it also ended up saving Japanese lives.

ShadowBear12

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences,
And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses,
And I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences.

Solar

Quote from: kramarat on June 29, 2012, 03:26:17 PM
They were doing everything they could think of, to kill US civilians. If they had the A-bomb, they wouldn't have thought twice about using it.

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=932
Absolutely right.
If I remember correctly, the Japs used balloons and the jet stream to send incendiary devices to the west coast.
I think only a few actually made it and one started a fire in the Sierra mt range near where I live.
That was targeting civilians, it served no other purpose.
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kramarat

Quote from: Solar on June 29, 2012, 08:15:21 PM
Absolutely right.
If I remember correctly, the Japs used balloons and the jet stream to send incendiary devices to the west coast.
I think only a few actually made it and one started a fire in the Sierra mt range near where I live.
That was targeting civilians, it served no other purpose.

The real fear, on the part of the US, was that they would be able to arm the balloons with biological agents, which they were working on.

If they succeeded............................... :scared:

Solar

Quote from: kramarat on June 30, 2012, 05:34:47 AM
The real fear, on the part of the US, was that they would be able to arm the balloons with biological agents, which they were working on.

If they succeeded............................... :scared:
Which is why people didn't stop internment camps, the Japanese proved they can be extremely ruthless and would fight to the death for their Emperor.
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kramarat

Quote from: Solar on June 30, 2012, 06:08:29 AM
Which is why people didn't stop internment camps, the Japanese proved they can be extremely ruthless and would fight to the death for their Emperor.

Imagine witnessing the Kamikaze pilots....................................I'm sure there was a lot of, WTF???!!!! :blink:

mdgiles

Quote from: kramarat on June 30, 2012, 06:14:47 AM
Imagine witnessing the Kamikaze pilots....................................I'm sure there was a lot of, WTF???!!!! :blink:
The problem with fighting the Japanese at the end of the war, is that their actions displayed a horribly rational logic. Take kamikazes for example. By that late in the war the US had radar, better pilots, superior aircraft, and proximity fused AA shells. The Japanese were simply not going to get through in a regular attack. So what do you do if all your planes are going to get shot down anyway? You tell them, "when you go down, make sure you take something with you". AND they were right about Allied morale. It's a toss up as to whether the Allies would have continued fighting in the face of horrendous casualties. The British were running out of troops even before they won in Europe. The Soviets, even with their disregard of casualties, had lost almost an entire generation. And the US was running out of combat infantry even before we had won in Europe. Not to mention the political pressure to bring the troops home from Europe and not send those same troops to the Pacific - even though many of the troops in the Pacific had been fighting longer. Without the bombs, the Japanese militarists strategy might have succeeded.
"LIBERALS: their willful ignorance is rivaled only by their catastrophic stupidity"!