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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:28
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Recently, it has come to my attention that there are various myths regarding the pure motives of the United States in WWII. There are various actions in which the US was decidedly not as pure as we like to think, but for me, the most shocking example of historical revisionism going on now is the mass denial of what happened on August 6th, 1945.
[A warning to the credulous: the following is based entirely on hard sources, found in those places that are rumoured to still exist: libraries. Calling for a link will get you no-where.]
On March 9th, 1944, the US destroyed most of Tokyo in a massive firebombing attack. This, coupled with a campaign in the following weeks that had a similar, if slightly less severe effect, made the Japanese realize that they had, beyond the shadow of doubt, lost the Pacific war. On July 18th, the emperor sent Truman a telegram asking for peace, at basically any price but the disolution of the Japanese imperial throne. The US did not respond (Bruce Franklin, Star Wars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination). At least, not with words. The US did, however, respond with more bombs. They proceded to bomb every city that had more than 50k inhabitants, leaving only Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and two other cities relatively unharmed (Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing).
Meanwhile, the atomic bomb was being developed. Initially, it was being developed in competition with the Germans, yet by 1944, it had become clear that Germany had no credible atomic bomb program. But the beast had been unleashed, and development of the bomb continued. The rational was to intimidate the Soviets. This became one of the excuses for dropping the bomb on Japan. Yet, not only did dropping the bomb on Japan not stop the USSR from dominating Eastern Europe, but the dropping of the bomb on a Japanese city was certainly not necessary to demonstrate the power of an atomic bomb. In fact, dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was not necessary to prove its destructive power to the Japanese. There were people in the US military who said that it would be a breach of everything the US stands for to drop the bomb on Japan without first demonstrating its power. One of these people was Ralph Bard, undersecretary of they navy. He was forced to resign (Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing).
Another excuse was the forcing of Japan's unconditional surrender. To achieve this a plan was formed for the invasion of Japan. An invasion which, according to Secretary of State Henry Stimson would cost 100k to 130k American lives. Suspiciously, this figure seems to have been made up. According to the US chiefs of staff, the invasion would have cost 25k to 50k American lives (ibid). As a sidenote, 200k Japanese (the great majority of whom were civilians) died because of Hiroshima.
However, it was wartime, and American lives are always to be valued over her enemies'. But, why did anyone have to die at that point? The Japanese were trying to negotiate with the US. In fact, according to the US Strategic Bombing Survey, "Japan would have surrendered even if atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. ...The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did not defeat Japan, nor...did they persuade Japan to accept unconditional surrender (Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: 50 years of denial)."
The US government tacitly acknowledged the unnecessity of the bomb by organizing a cover-up. On August 6th, Truman said, "16 hours ago an American plane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army military base (ibid)." He made no mention of the fact that 400K people lived in Hiroshima, and that the bomb was aimed at the center of the city, and not the military base.
Alas, the destruction at Hiroshima was hard to keep the public from discovering. However, the government tried its best. Scientists were flown in and stated that there was no lingering radiation. Leslie Groves informed Congress that people who fell to the bomb died instantly, and that "they say [radiation] is a very pleasant way to die ((Sven Lindqvist, A History of Bombing)." (I hope I don't need to mention that radiation is in fact less than the most pleasant method of death. Though, to give Groves credit, they probably didn't know the exact effects of radaiation until later, so he is just making **** up, and not going against a known truth.)
Years passed, and basically everyone connected with the bombing left the public view. By the 1980s, the historical community agreed that the Hiroshima was unnecessary. Yet, on the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima, ABC stations across America said the following: "What happened over Japan 40 years ago was a human tragedy that cost tens of thousands of lives. But what was planned to take place in the war between Japan and the US would almost certainly have been an even greater tragedy, costing hundreds of thousands of lives (Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: 50 years of denial)."
Now, even if we ignore the fact that the invasion of Japan was unnecessary, this is still a spurious statement. Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, to potentially save tens of thousands of lives. Are the people are ABC bad at comparative math, or is this more sinister than that?
In 1995, the National Air and Space museum prepared an exhibit of the never-before-seen Enola Gay, as well as explain Hiroshima, the history surrounding it, the reasons for and against the bombing, and show the effects of the bombing. In all, doing what a museum should, and giving a public venue for history. Yet, this was deemed unacceptable. The US airforce magazine demanded a "proud and patriotic" display of Enola Gay. The American Legion condemned the museum for its [obvious] intention to paint US airmen as war criminals. Even the Washington Post argued against such a display. These groups had influence with congress, which passed a resolution stating that the (as yet unsee) exhibit was "revisionist, unbalanced, and offensive. (Ibid)"
In order to continue funding, the directed, Martin Harwit, was forced to negotiate with the veterans, and allow them an oversight position regarding the exhibit. As a consequence, the scholarly debate over whether the bomb should have been dropped was removed. Almost everything concerning the effects of the atomic bomb was removed. Truman was depicted as not realizing that Hiroshima was not a military target (discovery of his journal from the potsdam conference proves that he knew that Hiroshima was not a military target, but, I mean, Hiroshima is a city! How do you confuse a city with a military installation!?), abd it was also pointed out that the entire population of Japan was armed with bamboo spears, thus meaning that no Japanese were civilians (this included childred, interestingly).
The coup de gras was when the American Legion insisted that it be mentioned that the bomb saved a million america lives. Let me repeat this. The American Legion insisted that the Smithsonian state that the invasion of Japan would have costed 1 million American lives. The highest estimate for the loses during an invasion of Japan is 63k, with the estimate generally being between 20K and 25K (smithsonian institute). Harwit categorically refused to go along with this. The response was Congress asking for his resignation, and threatening to reduce the funding for institute.
As a result, the entire exhibit was canceled.
On a personal level, I went through high school believing that an invasion was necessary, and that the bomb saved lives. Youth were (and still are) being taught a convienient version of history. But we are a democracy, and live in a country of free speech. Why must certain aspects of our heritage be hidden from us? Do we have to lie about everything we do that doesn't fit our image of ourselves?
The point, for me, is that, basically, I thought we were better than this.
Discuss.
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tinyp3nis
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compensate this!!
May 2002
time: 07:28
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quote:
By the 1980s, the historical community agreed that the Hiroshima was unnecessary. |
And
quote:
In 1995, the National Air and Space museum prepared an exhibit of the never-before-seen Enola Gay, as well as explain Hiroshima, the history surrounding it, the reasons for and against the bombing, and show the effects of the bombing. In all, doing what a museum should, and giving a public venue for history. Yet, this was deemed unacceptable. The US airforce magazine demanded a "proud and patriotic" display of Enola Gay. The American Legion condemned the museum for its [obvious] intention to paint US airmen as war criminals. Even the Washington Post argued against such a display. These groups had influence with congress, which passed a resolution stating that the (as yet unsee) exhibit was "revisionist, unbalanced, and offensive. (Ibid)"
In order to continue funding, the directed, Martin Harwit, was forced to negotiate with the veterans, and allow them an oversight position regarding the exhibit. As a consequence, the scholarly debate over whether the bomb should have been dropped was removed. Almost everything concerning the effects of the atomic bomb was removed. |
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jefftest
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What a bunch of mushy thinking and hindsight revisionism.
63000 was one estimate at one point by Marshall of US casualties just for Olympic. It was based on a serious under-estimate of Japanese strength on Kyushu, which was triple what the US had been planning for. General Marshall: "will not cost us in casualties more than 63,000 of the 190,000 combatant troops estimated as necessary for the operation". Well, there turned out to be 790,000 Japanese troops on Kyushu alone. At Okinawa, it took over 50,000 US casualties to defeat roughly 150,000 Japanese troops. More realistic estimates were in the neighborhood of 250,000 US casualties for Olympic alone. (note that casualties = killed+wounded, you seem to be mixing casualties and deaths above)
Also remember, Olympic was only phase one to seize Kyushu as a staging area, it would be the much larger Operation Coronet to actually seize the Kanto plain and Tokyo. The estimate for the 2 operations was generally around 1 million US casualties, which is where the American Legion gets its figures. As evidence that this was a more serious estimate, look among other things at the extra million Purple Hearts the US ended the war with, the bulk of which were ordered in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Thankfully, they were not necessary for WWII, but are still being distributed even today, after having been enough for Korea, Vietnam, Gulf Wars I & II and all other minor military actions over the last 60 years.
And this totally leaves out any Japanese casualties - look at the carnage on Okinawa, just concluded in April: 107,000 soldiers killed and 24,000 sealed in caves or buried by the Japanese themselves; 10,755 captured or surrendered. Civilian losses are hard to estimate, as a lot hid in caves where they were buried by the Japanese. The lowest estimate is 42,000 killed, with another 145,000 wounded.
And Okinawa wasn't even a home island - the Japanese will to defend the homeland was incredible. The cheerful Japanese slogan that summer was: "One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and Nation". 38 million civilians were enrolled in the Japanese militia program, and training to make massed charges against the American lines at night. The Japanese had been hoarding fuel and planes for a huge wave of suicide attacks, which had been proven quite effective at Okinawa.
Probably even more serious, the US air forces were less than 2 weeks away from beginning destruction of the Japanese transportation system to prepare for the invasions. This was to hinder troop movements, but would have had an even worse effect, due to the geography of Japan - most of the rice was grown in the north, and the bulk of the population was in the south. The 1945 rice harvest was already known to be bad - and Japanese civillians were *already* on a near starvation diet. Some estimates say that over 10 MILLION civillians would have starved due to problems in transporting the rice that would be available, even if the Japanese had surrendered immediately afterward. Even with the August surrender, rations were extremely low in 45/46, and mass starvation was very narrowly averted.
So what are the alternatives here? Invasion? Millions of casualties, followed by more millions starving. Blockade? Millions starving. Negotiation? OK, this one is a bit trickier.
It's the hardest to really dismiss, as *everybody* wishes it had been possible. But for evidence against it, look what actually happened. Before summer 45, the cabinet had still not been able to even articulate their terms, or determine even approximately what to have the few, inept peace feelers communicate. And note that these were only explorations, not coming anywhere NEAR a "surrender attempt". Note too that the US would be extremely skeptical of apparent attempts to "negotiate" from a country that had already pulled diplomatic skulduggery while their sneak attack force was sailing across the Pacific...
In fact every prior peace feeler was shut down by Tokyo immediately as it was discovered. Finally in summer 45, an envoy was sent to the Russians, with nebulous instructions, and receiving increasingly bizarre telegrams from Tokyo. I'll quote the Wall Street Journal article here:
"Marshall then learned from the Magic Summaries, just before the Potsdam Conference convened on July 17, 1945, about behind-the-scenes negotiations between Japan and the Soviet Union. From June 3-14, 1945, Koki Hirota, a Japanese envoy with Emperor Hirohito's blessing, had met with the Russian ambassador to Tokyo to propose a new relationship between the two
countries. Japan proposed to carve up Asia with the USSR. According to the Magic Diplomatic Summaries of July 3, 1945, Hirota told the Russian ambassador: "Japan will increase her naval strength in the future, and that, together with the Russian Army, would make a force unequaled in the world...." The Magic Summaries further revealed that throughout June and July 1945, Japan's militarist leaders were adamantly determined that they would never surrender unconditionally to the British and the Americans."
Then, even AFTER the first bomb, the cabinet is still deadlocked over surrender. After the SECOND bomb, the cabinet still dithers for days, is convinced only by the personal intervention of the emperor, and then a part of the military even starts a coup to try to overturn the government for THAT! Yeah, sure sounds like they were "ready to surrender" long before that :P
There was no "telegram from the emperor to the US on July 18th" - either you grossly misread this or the source is total BS. Near that date, Truman read a Magic intercept of the Japanese cabinet's instructions to the Moscow envoy, and it was in no way shape or form "peace at basically any price".
If they were sooo ready to surrender, then why didn't they respond to the Potsdam demand of July 26th? (This had the loosening of terms to "unconditional surrender of the armed forces" vs the previous Cairo phrasing "unconditional surrender of Japan") Oh, wait, they did, the published response of Premier Suzuki (and he was in the *peace* faction of the cabinet!) was that the Potsdam Declaration was "a thing of no great value", and "We will simply mokusatsu it". The main meaning of mokusatsu is "take no notice of; treat (anything) with silent contempt; ignore".
US Strategic Bombing Survey "would have surrendered anyway" - gee an Air Force study says that the Air Force was gonna finish winning the war alone. This document was part of the post war jockeying between the branches of the armed forces for funding and influence. It's definitely not a completely unbiased source. Oh, by the way they firebombed Tokyo again the evening of August 9th, after the Nagasaki bomb. *This* was how they planned to continue until Japan surrendered. And 100,000 killed in this firebombing is sooooo much better than 100,000 killed in an atomic bombing exactly how?
Even if the Japanese intentions had been to genuinely move quickly towards surrender, how long do you want to allow this process to drag on? November? December? Remember Japan is still brutally occupying large amounts of territory with huge populations in China, Indonesia, Dutch East Indies, Manchuria, etc. Thousands of civillians in these countries are dying *each day*. Shortening the war even by a few months arguably saves more civillian lives here alone than lost in the bombings.
This is the context. Now, at this point, Truman has a shot at ending the war quickly and decisively, using what they think of at the time as basically just a really big conventional bomb. What realistic alternative do you see?
No argument the a-bombings were terrible. I think only 60 years of hindsight of "eeeevil nuclear weapons" is making them seem more terrible than the alternatives. Because it's just oh so much worse to die in a blast or of eeeeevil radiation, than to starve to death slowly over the course of several months with your belly distended, helplessly watching your family slowly die too. Or from third degree burns over half your body or suffocation in the course of a "normal" firebombing.
The guys peddling these alternative lines are mainly trying to be controversial to sell books, and/or to push their own agendas. I have read a lot on both sides of this, and reluctantly conclude it was the least horrible of a lot of pretty horrible alternatives.
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Cruddy
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Was dropping the 2nd one necessary?
If you think about it, the crucial factor wasn't so much what the Allies did as what HiroHito did - no Emperor to order Japan in surrender, no easy victory.
I don't know one way or the other. I certainly wouldn't right off any country as "evil" over one partciular action.
Put it another way - there are evil "acts" but no truly evil "countries". Evil "regimes" but not truly evil "peoples".
Mind you, I haven't met them all so I could be wrong about that.
Last edited by Cruddy on 31-01-2005 at 20:23
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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:28
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quote:
I disagree with the article. The nuclear bomb did shorten the war considerably which was a very good thing. I saw on documentary on the History channel last night about secret planes of WW2. Japan and Germany were developping new jet planes that were far superior to the planes the Allies had. If the war had been allowed to continue for another year or two and Japan had begun mass production of its new jet planes, Japan could have turned the tide of WW2 back in its favor. This would have been disastrous.
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This is, I'm afraid, quite bogus. It's true that Germany had developed the ME-262, which was superior to anything the allies could field, but they didn't start producing them until late 1944, at which point they were immaterial, given Allied numerical superiority. Japan, however, was not developing anything better than US planes. Moreover, all of Japan's good pilots were basically dead by the end of 1943, and even had Japan come out with a new line of planes during Okinawa, they would have no-one trained to fly them, and they would have been used as Kamikazis, which had no effect on the course of the war. Also, given the state of infrastructure, mass producing anything advanced would have proved complicated.
In response to Jefftest, I do not have enough information to do anything but counter accurate-sounding assertions with more accurate-sounding assertions. But that isn't really the point. The point is that there is a systematic, mass denial that there is any controversy at all. Furthermore, there is an attempt to gloss over any of the consequences of the bomb. Notice the systematic effort to downplay the number of people who died from the bomb. What I found disturbing in my research was not that the bomb was, at least arguably, unncessary, but that as soon as it had been dropped, those in a position of power lied about it to the American public.
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jefftest
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It's good that our leaders had at least *some* doubts, it would take a real head case to make a decision like that without having second thoughts. But you can easily see where expressing these publicly can lead - revisionist "historians" and other activists with an agenda go through and cherry pick the quotes they like, and weave them into a very misleading tapestry.
And it's good to have some controversy - but in the right time and place, and where each side can get a fair say. The Enola Gay exhibit in the National Air and Space Museum was not the place for a biased display, out of context of the totality of the war, and slanted heavily towards one point of view.
By law "The national air and space museum shall memorialize the national development of aviation and space flight; collect, preserve, and display aeronautical and space flight equipment of historical interest and significance; serve as a repository for scientific equipment and data pertaining to the development of aviation and space flight; and provide educational material for the historical study of aviation and space flight."
This was broadened a bit in 1961 by a congressional decree, but the primary purpose of the museum is to display aircraft. SOME indication of the consequences of use, and portrayal of historic controversies is not out of place. But I almost totally sympathize with the Air Force Association. You've steeped yourself in the revisionists side, I challenge you to read the Air Force Association's side: http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/
quote:
The restored aircraft will be there all right, the front fifty-six feet of it, anyway. The rest of the gallery space is allotted to a program about the atomic bomb. The presentation is designed for shock effect. The exhibition plan notes that parents might find some parts unsuitable for viewing by their children.
For the "emotional center" of the exhibit, the curators are collecting burnt watches and broken wall clocks, photos of victims -- which will be enlarged to life size -- as well as melted and broken religious objects. One display is a schoolgirl's lunch box with remains of peas and rice reduced to carbon. To ensure that nobody misses the point, "where possible, photos of the persons who owned or wore these artifacts would be used to show that real people stood behind the artifacts." Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will recall the horror in their own words.
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The exhibition plan the museum was following as recently as November picked up the story of the war in 1945 as the end approached. It depicted the Japanese in a desperate defense of their home islands, saying little about what had made such a defense necessary. US conduct of the war was depicted as brutal, vindictive, and racially motivated.
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and
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Examination of the Smithsonian's own script, along with other factors we have reported, substantiate our belief that:
The exhibition as planned lacks balance and historical context.
It is designed to play on emotions.
It is part of a pattern in which the Smithsonian depicts US military airpower in a negative way.
Please note that the January 12 Smithsonian script analyzed here is the one incorporating what we described in our report as "major concessions to balance" when compared with previous exhibition plans by the museum.
Content analysis:
49 Photos of Japanese casualties.
3 Photos of American casualties.
5 Photos of Japanese military members in military role.
65 Photos of American military members in military role.
302 Total text pages in script.
4 Text pages with references to Japanese atrocities.
66 Text pages on Hiroshima/Nagasaki "ground zero."
13 Text pages on Japanese casualties, suffering, damage from earlier B-29 missions.
25 "Ground Zero" photos featuring women, children, mutilated religious objects.
13 "Ground Zero" artifacts related to women, children, religion.
2 Text pages on Japan's search for a diplomatic solution.
4 Text pages on US avoidance of a diplomatic solution.
1 Aggressive, anti-American statements by Japanese.
10 Aggressive, anti-Japanese statements by Americans
2 pages Text references to US internment of Japanese.
1 paragraph Text references to Japanese treatment of US POWs.
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What rankled the revisionists is that the Post said in a January 1995 editorial that early drafts of the Enola Gay script were "incredibly propagandistic and intellectually shabby" and had "a tendentiously antinuclear and anti-American tone." The Post also said the curators had repeatedly made things worse by their "misplaced condescension and refusal to see the criticisms of bias as anything but the carping of the insufficiently sophisticated."
In February, another Post editorial added: "It is important to be clear about what happened at the Smithsonian. It is not, as some have it, that benighted advocates of a special-interest or right-wing point of view brought political power to bear to crush and distort the historical truth. Quite the contrary. Narrow-minded representatives of a special-interest and revisionist point of view attempted to use their inside track to appropriate and hollow out a historical event that large numbers of Americans alive at that time and engaged in the war had witnessed and understood in a very different -- and authentic -- way."
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That was referring to the Washington Post, a bastion of right-wing thought (<<--- sarcasm alert for foreign readers. The Post is quite liberal.)
Last edited by jefftest on 01-02-2005 at 00:54
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:28
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Jefftest has convinced me that if the bombs were what motivated the emperor to surrender then indeed the atomic bombs spared far more lives than they took.
But I think the intentional targeting of civilians in places of very limited military value, whether they were targeted with atom bombs or napalm certainly was grossly immoral. I think people dwell too much on the relative 'merits' of atom bombs vs conventional weapons and not enough on the total indifference to civilian suffering with which all manner of weapoins were used in ww2.
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Deity Dude
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Westland, Michigan
Aug 2000
time: 00:28
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Jefftest said it better then I could and is absolutely right.
The "bomb" saved 100,000's of lives (if not millions) on all sides.
It's unfortunate that 200,000 had to die save so amny more.
As a side note, I shudder to think what would have happened if Japan had developed the atomic bomb, in say, 1941.
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Dissident
you don't think racism had anything to do with the use of the bomb?
I doubt they would have used it on the germans. |
umm, it was developed with the intention of using it on the germans
it was only used on Japan because the Germans were finished
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Drogue
The bomb killed hundreds of thousands, and by most estimates, saved tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. A full frontal assault would have lost fewer than the bomb overall, just would have cost more US lives. |
but normal napalm bombing, which we were doing anyways, was killing 100000s...
and where is this most estimates?
I have seen far more claim 100000s than 10000s
remember, the japanese always lost far more men than the US (sometimes by an order of magnitude)
and if was city fighting, than it would be women and children
you can just look at the city fighting in east europe to see how devistating and desctructive it would be to both sides
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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quote:
Originally posted by Admiral
On a personal level, I went through high school believing that an invasion was necessary, and that the bomb saved lives. Youth were (and still are) being taught a convienient version of history. But we are a democracy, and live in a country of free speech. Why must certain aspects of our heritage be hidden from us? Do we have to lie about everything we do that doesn't fit our image of ourselves?
The point, for me, is that, basically, I thought we were better than this.
Discuss. |
I note that you keep quoting the same source
it would be nice if you had more sources
Jon miller
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Jon Miller
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tarawa:
US ~ 3,000 casualties
Japan ~ 4,683 dead
iowa jima:
US ~ 26,000 casualties
Japan ~ 18,917 dead
okinowa:
US ~ 49,151 casualties
Japan ~ 110,000 dead
if there was a fight, and if only ~130,000 japanese fought, as many would die as in the two nuke blasts
and remember that there were not many citizens in at least two of those battles, in japan the fighting would have been in cities
Jon Miller
(I am actually unsure of the necessity of the second blast, but am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt)
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Deity Dude
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Westland, Michigan
Aug 2000
time: 00:28
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Drogue...
There were 250,000 civllians dying per month in the Japanese occupied territorries.
Without the bomb the USSR and Japanese conflict would have continued. I'm sure some people died in that conflict.
If there was no bomb, the final US decision would probably have been a blockade combined with continued firebombings anda major bombing of the transportation network. (as Jefftest pointed out, this would have led to massive starvation in Japan) With the possible exception of an invasion in the north to prevent a Soviet occupation.
Unfortuanately, was unwilling to surrender until 2 atomic bombs were dropped (and then only grudgingly).
The point is US casualties would have been minimal without a bombing because there was no need to invade. Why lose close to a million Americans when u can put the island under siege. The lives that were saved were the millions of Japanese that didnt starve and the millions in the occupied territories that were dropping like flies.
BTW, Japan started the war, was extremely brutal to all of its enemies throughout the war and certainly didn't mind if their people or others died.
Sometimes you're just not left a clean choice.
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Jon Miller
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btw, to see how city war fair was for the civilians
in stalingrad (USSR ~.5 m dead, Nazis ~.3 m dead)
The population of Stalingrad - now Volgograd - fell from 850,000 to just 1,500 at the end of the war.
I figure that there would probably have been ~1 m casualties at the minimum if the war was allowed to continue
besides all the damage Japan was doing to other territories
Jon Miller
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Dry
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Brussels
Sep 2000
time: 06:28
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Let me see if I understand you well Jefftest
So, on one side, we have the Japanese, ready for
quote:
... "One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and Nation" ... |
even tfrom slow starvation:
quote:
... Some estimates say that over 10 MILLION civillians would have starved due to problems in transporting the rice that would be available, ... |
And this, seemed to be very well known in the US
quote:
... Marshall then learned from the Magic Summaries ... |
So, if they are ready for millions deads, Truman knows that 100,000 is certainly not enough for a surrender. As a proof, the bombing of Tokyo.
quote:
... And 100,000 killed in this firebombing ... |
and [Truman thinks] that the death by A-bomb is not worst than a firebombing or starvation
quote:
... is sooooo much better than 100,000 killed in an atomic bombing exactly how? ... Because it's just oh so much worse to die in a blast or of eeeeevil radiation, than to starve to death slowly over the course of several months with your belly distended, helplessly watching your family slowly die too. ... |
So, as you say:
quote:
... This is the context. Now, at this point, Truman has a shot at ending the war quickly and decisively, using what they think of at the time as basically just a really big conventional bomb. What realistic alternative do you see? |
Ok, let me try:
Now, at this point, Truman thinks to himself: "A people ready to sacrifice the entire nation, to die from starvation by millions, is not ready to surrender if we firebomb Tokyo. BUT... these same people will certainly surrender if we bomb some provincial city with just a really big conventional bomb. So, gentlemen, let's kill only a few 100K of them instead of millions. They will be so scared by dying fast and in so small amounts that they will surrender."
Uh ?!? Does not sounds very realistic to me...
Common, be serious. I do not believe they were not ready to surrender. Neither were they ready to surrender.
I believe they were divided.
The gambit of "let's drop a really big conventional bomb, on those crazy millions of kamikaze, kill a few hundred thousands and we hope they will surrender", sounds far too unrealistic, too risky, to be played on the info Jefftest gave us.
I think the US knew what they were doing.
I believe the US knew that some Japanese were ready for surrender, but those Japanese were weak, a minority among the militaristic class.
Those guys needed a psychological moment to propose surrender to their countrymen, a moment that also allowed them not to lose face, very important to Asians.
I think there were contacts between those guys and the US.
The A-bomb allowed them to surrender without losing face.
The Japan vase, at that time, was fragile and ripe for the psychological push.
I don't know what would have happen without the A-bomb, but I will say neither that it was needed, nor that it was useless.
It was the choice that had to be made... and maybe... I say maybe ... that the intimidation of the russians was only the small point that helped making a decision.
I agree that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were indeed sacrificed, that it was needed, that it has shorten the war and reduced the number of victims on both sides.
But I have to confess that Jefftest's propaganstration almost made me believe the exact opposite.
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jefftest
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? I don't see how what you're saying is so different. Truman clearly *hoped* that a sudden blow like this would finally be "enough". Truman was appalled at the prospect of "an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other". But don't doubt that the US would have at its disposal even more terrible tools to prosecute the end of the war. I get the sense you're saying it was a bluff of some sort - I really don't think so. If it had failed, the US was continuing to ramp up the forces to strike Japan.
This may have had a bit to do with it though. From the New York Times:
"One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the United States had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days." The war minister informed the Cabinet of this grim news -- but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the second atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and were able to prevail."
Oddly, this was not all *that* far from the truth either. It's not like the 2 bombs were all there was ever going to be. The fissionable core of a 3rd bomb was already on the way to Tinian, and the bomb would be ready to drop by Aug 20th. After that, the US had the capacity to produce at least 3 plutonium bombs per month. The plan was to use about 6 of these in November tactically to support the Olympic landings. 9-12 more would be saved for Coronet in the spring. The rest would be dropped on cities, while the firebombings continued. Eighth Air Force (the guys who had just finished up the bombing campaign against Germany) was being redeployed to the Pacific to add to the bombing of Japan.
The sense I got from the context of the Magic intercepts is that the US was seeing that some parts in the Japanese government were at least beginning to look for some kind of an end to the war - but not being privy to the non-broadcast cabinet meetings, could not tell how serious it was. In fact, from the Magic telegrams, they certainly appeared to be trying all sorts of tricks to squirm out of anything approaching unconditional surrender, and the public proclamations disparaged the Potsdam demand.
My point was mainly that if they didn't surrender relatively soon after Aug 9th, that it was gonna get a *whole* lot worse. August would probably be only incrementally worse: more firebombings, a 3rd atomic attack. But surely by November, either an awfully bloody invasion would be imminent, or, alternatively, the 6 bombs saved to support it would be used on cities. Along with 3 more months of firebombings, from an increasingly large bombing force.
Other parts of the NYT article certainly support what you say:
quote:
The Japanese scholarship, by historians like Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized upon the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.
"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.
The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate and were thus described by Mitsumasa Yonai, the navy minister at the time, as a "gift from heaven."
Without the atomic bombings, Japan would have continued fighting by inertia. This would have meant more firebombing of Japanese cities and a ground invasion, planned for November 1945, of the main Japanese islands. The fighting over the small, sparsely populated islands of Okinawa had killed 14,000 Americans and 200,000 Japanese, and in the main islands the toll would have run into the millions.
Wartime records and memoirs show that the emperor and some of his aides wanted to end the war by summer 1945. But they were vacillating and couldn't prevail over a military that was determined to keep going even if that meant, as a navy official urged at one meeting, "sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives."
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I don't see how it is the "reverse" of what I was saying though...
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31-01-2005 11:29
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