Discussion for article #239233
Perhaps they should have surrendered after Hiroshima then.
Hell for that matter, maybe they shouldn’t have brought this end upon their nation with Pearl Harbor, Baatan, Palawan, Unit 731, Shinyo Maru, Nanking, etc…
They started it. They had it coming. We finished it.
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I’ve always had questions about the dropping of the second bomb and suspect it was done more for the benefit of the Soviet Union–“see, Stalin, we can do this repeatedly”–than for any sort of strategic reason vis a vis Japan. And if that was the case, it would be a stain on our country indeed.
That said, this essay–from Iran to smallpox blankets to Big Boy in a couple of paragraphs, with no real exploration of the geopolitical context or the nominal rationale that the Truman Admin gave for its actions–is shite. Let’'s hope the professor is never awarded awarded tenure if this is representative of his intelect and scholarship.
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There are conversations among historians and linguists that Japan indeed did attempt to reach out to surrender immediately after Hiroshima, but that mistranslations and misunderstanding made the effort futile. I no longer no the source of this information, which was presented in my linguistics class in college; I would be interested if there is some reliable source for this idea.
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Thanks for the comment–600 word op eds can only touch on topics to be sure, and I appreciate additions to the conversation in comments.
And that’s despite already being tenured! We never stop learning, y’know.
Ben
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Whatever or however America justifies the nuking of another nation, the fact remains that we did and that we now try to appear as the voice of reason to the rest of the world.
Without ridding ourselves of the bombs of mass destruction, I’ve never understood how we can even begin to preach to anyone else about not acquiring nuclear capability.
Anyone that thinks that Israel is in the right in its arguments for a heavily sanctioned Iran due to fear of nuclear attack are engaging in the same backwards thinking. Israel has a much larger nuclear arsenal than they admit and aren’t about to give it up either and yet they deflect to the almost comical thought that it is justified because their enemy, that has not one nuke, and is very limited in their ability to produce any at all is somehow justification for their unnecessary arsenal.
Rational people don’t talk nuclear war where all lose, rational people talk peace and diplomacy and use reasonable methods to achieve goals. Rational people see the loss of nuclear war as what it is, not worth any gain that might be wrongly foreseen.
The fear that creates the build up of nuclear bombs should not be greater than the fear of the reality of actually using nuclear weapons.
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Well on the one hand, yes it was a warning to the whole world – Stalin especially – of what we could do and were prepared to do if someone messed with us.
On the other hand, preliminary estimates of casualties had Operation Downfall gone forward ranged from 500k-1.5 million allied, and upwards of 5-10 million Japanese. In that respect, the atomic bombings brought the end of the war about at a significant savings of life and time.
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I knew that was coming for some reason. I’m sure with the go ahead to write more that you could’ve and would’ve Ben.
Maybe the conversation needs to continue somewhere else?
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That’s certainly why Hiroshima can be argued for so convincingly, I’d say. But to me Nagasaki is a very different story.
Ben
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The people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Dresden, Royan, ad nauseam, didn’t “have it coming”. They never do. We chose to use the atomic bomb - and to kill a sufficient number of people to drive the point home in a world inured to mass destruction at that point - for long term strategic purposes. If the goal was to impress upon the Japanese the power of the bomb, we could have bombed an island in Tokyo harbor. But instead we decided to make a spectacle that the Ruskies or others would never forget.
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Unfortunately, the government of Japan declined to gather together in one handy place free of civilians so that we could get the perfect bombing in place.
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"The minutes of this committee were declassified years ago — and they show it considered some far less deadly targets. The initial list included a remote military installation and Tokyo Bay, where the bomb would have been detonated as a demonstration.
But the target committee decided those options wouldn’t show the world the power of the new bomb.
“They want people to understand that this is something different, and so picking a place that will showcase how different it is, is very important,” Wellerstein says."
ETA: Now, you might quibble about whether the targeting was to show our military dick, or to ensure that the world would find out about how horrible the weapon was so that it would never be used again, but the point is that we chose to kill over a 100K people in a couple of days in dramatic fashion to impress the world, not as the only way to get the Japanese to surrender without wasting American lives.
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In short, it’s almost impossible to argue that the U.S. ever intended not to drop the second bomb.
Because the US always intended to drop the second bomb? They weren’t operating under the same parameters/in the same frame of mind that has developed around the use of nuclear weapons in the 70 years since they were first used. Truman’s order regarding the use of nukes pretty much just authorized the military to start using nukes and the military then pretty much started using them in a manner not all that different from how they had been using conventional and incendiary bombs through out the war. The only reason they stopped at two, there was a third bomb that would have ready within the week and a couple more within roughly a month, was that Truman ordered them too.
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Not so much mistranslations as lack of completeness. The Japanese wanted to ensure the continuation of the Emperor, and with that, would have been quite likely to enter into surrender negotiations. The Allies had said, “Unconditional”, but were ambivalent about the Emperor, and in the end kept him. In theory, had both parties known about the second part of each other’s stands, peace would have come sooner. In theory.
But it should be noted that even after two bombs, after the Russians had attacked and were taking over Manchuria, the Japanese Army (who were really the controlling entity) was still very, very torn about surrender. In fact, there was a coup attempt that came very close to succeeding the night before the Emperors speech on surrender.
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Context is everything. Japan had demonstrated that they were willing to fight to the bitter end, despite repeated B29 bombings (with casualties which exceeded the nuclear strikes on several occasions). The second bomb was dropped quickly to give the illusion that the US had more nuclear bombs than they did. This bomb ended the war quickly, and saved lives on both side.
To put the casualties in perspective, consider that 60 million people died during WW2. That’s over 27,000 deaths per day, for 6 years. The Nagasaki bombing killed about 50,000 people. During the B29 (conventional) bombing raids of Tokyo, up to 80,000 people died in one raid.
The shock effect of the nuclear strikes was essential, and the second bombing erased any doubts the Japanese had, despite a significant element who was opposed to surrender.
Balance this with the estimates of casualties with the invasion of Japan, which were as high as 14 million deaths (with up to 4 million US deaths).
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We live in a real, and very flawed world though. If we believe in nuclear non-proliferation, it’s only the great powers of the world that have any chance of bringing that about. To put it another way, if we sit back and do nothing, don’t “preach” as you put it, who will give voice–and influence–towards stopping the spread of nuclear weapons?
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they bombed a military facility, we nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians… seems like a measured response.
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I very much agree, but then the same question/argument that I make stands. How can we expect others to fall in line and take us seriously when we are loaded to the gills with enough weapons to essentially destroy the world?
We aren’t sitting back but then again we are asking others to do what we ourselves aren’t willing to do or even if we were willing, just plain won’t do. We can voice all day long but without leading in the non-proliferation and actually majorly reducing the existing arsenals and not replacing them with more, we are lying to ourselves and spinning our wheels to no real end and for no real purpose.
It’s a catch-22 sort of. As long as we fear being nuked we must truly possess the ability to nuke back not just a threat but the true ability. Supposedly, this is what bombing Japan proved.
This is a fool’s errand and foolish. There is no winner in a nuclear war and no one should want to win that war.
The opportunities of peace far outweigh the shallow and death filled win of a nuclear war. Peace is the clear winner and the only realistic goal.
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Dresden and Mystic were close to war crimes. But conflating that with the British burning of Washington and Fallujah? Really? That is sloppy. (Note I say Fallujah, not the Iraq war. The war itself was likely criminal.) And My Lai, given the training and supply of our soldiers was inevitable, but certainly not planned or systematic.
" This is one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded by urban industrial structures.The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defense materials. " This is the assessment of the targeting committee in Mat, 1945 of Kokura. Far from being “fully a civilian one”, as the author contends. The author is correct that Nagasaki had only a small military value (Steel works and a torpedo factory), but Nagasaki was not even on the original list. It was only put on after one of the primary targets, Kyoto, was eliminated since the attack on that city was viewed as primarily a “psychological” one on an “intellectual center”.
The author does concede that nuclear weapons are a strictly logical follow up of the idea of total war, where the nation’s capacity for war is viewed as just as important as its weapons of war. The authors fails to follow that logic by condemning the symptoms rather than the cause: war itself.
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The main reason the bombs were dropped were “because”, they had them, and want it to try them. At the time the Japanese were mpt considered human. I found some WW2 Navy training booklets and Japanese where drawn to make them look like monkeys complete with tails.
The second reason was the soviets, they wanted to show Stalin what can be done, and also finish the war as soon as possible so that the Soviets stopped helping themselves with Japanese occupied territory.
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