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Accepting that a nuclear weapon was the best way to end the war, was it really necessary to use 2? It's the second one that doesn't sit well with me. Even by

by dade_ 11y ago

Accepting that a nuclear weapon was the best way to end the war, was it really necessary to use 2? It's the second one that doesn't sit well with me. Even by the logic in this account, the first bomb made the threat of subsequent attacks real. At least it is still being discussed and debated.

sanoli 11y ago
They dropped the first and Japan did not surrender. Only after the second. So, accepting it was the best way to end the war, it was necessary to use 2. From what I've read, many high officials still didn't want to accept the surrender, even after the second bomb.
- ourmandave 11y ago
  Japan didn't surrender until the Soviets declared war and wiped out their million man army in Manchuria which was after the bombs were dropped.
  - hga 11y ago
    It started in between, and the Soviets had only made great progress, the IJA wasn't quite at the "wiped out" level. However this thesis runs into at least two problems: The Soviets were no great threat to the home islands, at least without the naval oriented Allies providing ships, boats and air cover. Nor do I recall them showing any great interest in that decisive part of the end game, vs. playing the same game they'd started with Eastern Europe. Which, let us not forget, included mass murder of locals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre The Emperor mentioned the atomic bombing in his famous radio broadcast, not the Soviet invasion. (Very few other contemporaneous, reliable records survived the mass destruction of documents before the occupation.) Few doubt that it was a cause of the invasion, but there's absolutely no support for it being a greater cause than the atomic bombings, with the promise of more to come.
leojg 11y ago
Its likely that they used 2 because they only had 2. If they had a dozen or the thousand they have today they would had used them all. The real effects of such weapons were unknown and the public opinion didnt really care about killing all those inocent civilians(it is not that different from the mass bombings done in the war, with "conventional weapons")
- merpnderp 11y ago
  US public opinion was never high on the Japanese since the turn of the century when the Japanese started industrializing and modernizing their military, threatening US dominance in the region. But after the Red Cross published their photos on the Rape of Nanking, US public opinion bottomed out so much I doubt the attack on Pearl Harbor made them much more hated.
  - veidr 11y ago
    Don't know about that. Both of my grandfathers (I'm American) enlisted the day after the Pearl Harbor attack -- along with half the men in their neighborhoods[1]. Committing atrocities in Nanking might not have been good PR, but I don't think it moved the needle like actually attacking America. [1]: Source: my grandmothers' stories
    - merpnderp 11y ago
      I agree. My grandfather and many of my family in that generation signed up the next day (I'm American too). I should of been more clear in that after the Red Cross photos, I doubt Americans could have thought less of the Japanese. I mean that in the context of when the Japanese started publishing head chopping contests of Chinese civilians between officers in the Imperial Army, no one in the US could be any more outraged.
  - hga 11y ago
    By the time of the bombings, what we'd recently learned about the Bataan Death March due to our very expensive liberation of the Philippines was the big motivator. I've been reading Now It Can Be Told by Leslie Groves, the Army general in charge of the Manhattan Project, and I just came to this bit in the chapter titled "Hiroshima", right after he delivered the first paper report of the bombing early in the following morning: [US Army Chief of Staff] General Marshall expressed his feeling that we should guard against too much gratification over our success, because it undoubtedly involved a large number of Japanese casualties. I replied that I was not thinking so much about those casualties as I was about the men who had made the Bataan death march. When we got into the hall, Arnold [Army Air Force Commanding General] slapped me on the back and said, "I am glad you said that---it's just the way I feel." I have always thought that this was the real feeling of every experienced officer, particularly those who occupied positions of great responsibility, including General Marshall himself. It was quite evident to all of us, as well as to the [War] Secretary up on Long Island [resting after the Potsdam Conference], that our hope of ending the war thought the development of atomic energy was close to realization. In general, they of course knew they were doing a terrible thing, but as discussed here, it was to stop a much more terrible outcome. E.g. an estimated 250,000 killed every month the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Or the mass use of nukes in the coming invasion; after Nagasaki a debate started about how to use the 3rd, to destroy another city or reserve it for the 5 or so needed for otherwise impractical Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu (the Japanese had reinforced it, and had constructed way too many kamikaze planes, even more than we estimated).
scottjad 11y ago
What's crazy is that they planned to continue using them as they became available. So 3, 4, 5 ..., 20, etc. 100? It's hard to know at what point they would have stopped had the regime not surrendered (which they were already planning to do). So it's not really "it's better that 200k Japanese civilians die than x US soldiers" (which is a despicable view and is based on the false views that massacring civilians is OK and that unconditional surrender was necessary), because they didn't know two bombs was the magic number. It could have been 10, or 50. Basically they were probably willing to kill a whole lot more civilians than they did.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already. No time for philosophy.
  - scottjad 11y ago
    > They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already. No time for philosophy. Where "fight" means massacre civilians by the hundreds of thousands or millions. Where "won" means received unconditional surrender when they could already have a very favorable conditional surrender. Where "fight to survive" means they (the US in general and the US military, not individual soldiers) at this point (when they dropped the bomb) were in no danger of not surviving. Where "no time for philosophy" means no time for a conscience or morality. And plenty of US military leaders at the highest levels did have a conscience and opposed using the atomic bomb against civilians at that point in the war. See my link in other comments.
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      A favorable condition of surrender is debatable (who knew what when). Otherwise you seem to have a very good grasp on the situation. Surviving means wiping out the country that had every intention of conquering the world. Stopping meant trusting them to be nice; we didn't even do that after winning. So stopping was not an option, because survival.

by dade_ 11y ago

sanoli 11y ago

They dropped the first and Japan did not surrender. Only after the second. So, accepting it was the best way to end the war, it was necessary to use 2. From what I've read, many high officials still didn't want to accept the surrender, even after the second bomb.

ourmandave 11y ago
Japan didn't surrender until the Soviets declared war and wiped out their million man army in Manchuria which was after the bombs were dropped.
- hga 11y ago
  It started in between, and the Soviets had only made great progress, the IJA wasn't quite at the "wiped out" level. However this thesis runs into at least two problems: The Soviets were no great threat to the home islands, at least without the naval oriented Allies providing ships, boats and air cover. Nor do I recall them showing any great interest in that decisive part of the end game, vs. playing the same game they'd started with Eastern Europe. Which, let us not forget, included mass murder of locals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre The Emperor mentioned the atomic bombing in his famous radio broadcast, not the Soviet invasion. (Very few other contemporaneous, reliable records survived the mass destruction of documents before the occupation.) Few doubt that it was a cause of the invasion, but there's absolutely no support for it being a greater cause than the atomic bombings, with the promise of more to come.

leojg 11y ago

Its likely that they used 2 because they only had 2. If they had a dozen or the thousand they have today they would had used them all. The real effects of such weapons were unknown and the public opinion didnt really care about killing all those inocent civilians(it is not that different from the mass bombings done in the war, with "conventional weapons")

merpnderp 11y ago
US public opinion was never high on the Japanese since the turn of the century when the Japanese started industrializing and modernizing their military, threatening US dominance in the region. But after the Red Cross published their photos on the Rape of Nanking, US public opinion bottomed out so much I doubt the attack on Pearl Harbor made them much more hated.
- veidr 11y ago
  Don't know about that. Both of my grandfathers (I'm American) enlisted the day after the Pearl Harbor attack -- along with half the men in their neighborhoods[1]. Committing atrocities in Nanking might not have been good PR, but I don't think it moved the needle like actually attacking America. [1]: Source: my grandmothers' stories
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    I agree. My grandfather and many of my family in that generation signed up the next day (I'm American too). I should of been more clear in that after the Red Cross photos, I doubt Americans could have thought less of the Japanese. I mean that in the context of when the Japanese started publishing head chopping contests of Chinese civilians between officers in the Imperial Army, no one in the US could be any more outraged.
- hga 11y ago
  By the time of the bombings, what we'd recently learned about the Bataan Death March due to our very expensive liberation of the Philippines was the big motivator. I've been reading Now It Can Be Told by Leslie Groves, the Army general in charge of the Manhattan Project, and I just came to this bit in the chapter titled "Hiroshima", right after he delivered the first paper report of the bombing early in the following morning: [US Army Chief of Staff] General Marshall expressed his feeling that we should guard against too much gratification over our success, because it undoubtedly involved a large number of Japanese casualties. I replied that I was not thinking so much about those casualties as I was about the men who had made the Bataan death march. When we got into the hall, Arnold [Army Air Force Commanding General] slapped me on the back and said, "I am glad you said that---it's just the way I feel." I have always thought that this was the real feeling of every experienced officer, particularly those who occupied positions of great responsibility, including General Marshall himself. It was quite evident to all of us, as well as to the [War] Secretary up on Long Island [resting after the Potsdam Conference], that our hope of ending the war thought the development of atomic energy was close to realization. In general, they of course knew they were doing a terrible thing, but as discussed here, it was to stop a much more terrible outcome. E.g. an estimated 250,000 killed every month the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Or the mass use of nukes in the coming invasion; after Nagasaki a debate started about how to use the 3rd, to destroy another city or reserve it for the 5 or so needed for otherwise impractical Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu (the Japanese had reinforced it, and had constructed way too many kamikaze planes, even more than we estimated).

scottjad 11y ago

What's crazy is that they planned to continue using them as they became available. So 3, 4, 5 ..., 20, etc. 100? It's hard to know at what point they would have stopped had the regime not surrendered (which they were already planning to do). So it's not really "it's better that 200k Japanese civilians die than x US soldiers" (which is a despicable view and is based on the false views that massacring civilians is OK and that unconditional surrender was necessary), because they didn't know two bombs was the magic number. It could have been 10, or 50. Basically they were probably willing to kill a whole lot more civilians than they did.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already. No time for philosophy.
- scottjad 11y ago
  > They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already. No time for philosophy. Where "fight" means massacre civilians by the hundreds of thousands or millions. Where "won" means received unconditional surrender when they could already have a very favorable conditional surrender. Where "fight to survive" means they (the US in general and the US military, not individual soldiers) at this point (when they dropped the bomb) were in no danger of not surviving. Where "no time for philosophy" means no time for a conscience or morality. And plenty of US military leaders at the highest levels did have a conscience and opposed using the atomic bomb against civilians at that point in the war. See my link in other comments.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    A favorable condition of surrender is debatable (who knew what when). Otherwise you seem to have a very good grasp on the situation. Surviving means wiping out the country that had every intention of conquering the world. Stopping meant trusting them to be nice; we didn't even do that after winning. So stopping was not an option, because survival.