6 ms·

> In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in whi

by mevile 10y ago

> In the street, the first thing he saw was a squad of soldiers who had been burrowing into the hillside opposite, making one of the thousands of dugouts in which the Japanese apparently intended to resist invasion, hill by hill, life for life; the soldiers were coming out of the hole, where they should have been safe, and blood was running from their heads, chests, and backs. They were silent and dazed. However I may feel about the bomb having been used, I don't doubt it saved more lives than it took. As for all the civilians and children and other non-combatants, I doubt the tragedy would have been less without the bomb. It's hard for me to reconcile how such an obvious force of destruction could be more desirable than an invasion, and that's probably because it's very hard for me to understand the destruction an invasion creates. An invasion's impact isn't as easy to put into neat pictures and anecdotes as a singular experience that a bomb explosion creates. There's some question if the ramp up of the Soviets on their eastern border had more to do with Japan's surrender than the atomic bombs we dropped. I'm not sure there's a clear answer there.

hudibras 10y ago
If the U.S. had instead somehow parachuted in 200,000 troops to Hiroshima, and then lined up and shot to death 100,000 men, women, children, elderly people, hospital patients, etc., and then burned every building down to the ground, would that be okay? What if by doing so it would end the war? Even if there were going to be many U.S. military casualties (which I doubt, although I know this is debatable), that doesn't in any way justify killing civilians. It's a tragedy of World War 2 (and Korea and Vietnam to lesser extents) that our leaders thought this was an appropriate way to fight a war.
- sukilot 10y ago
  Why do soldiers deserve to die more than civilians? This is not obvious. Soldiers by and large are not enrolled in war by virtue of free choice among competitive options.
  - slededit 10y ago
    Soldiers have the means to defend themselves.
- adventured 10y ago
  > that doesn't in any way justify killing civilians WW2 wasn't just a war, it was absolute war: the survival of nations and perhaps hundreds of millions of people were on the line. In absolute war, most of the resources of the nation, including most of its labor pool, is put into war supply mode. That is a critical distinction. Killing civilians was inherently necessary, as they worked the manufacturing plants that supplied the weapons. If you intend to destroy the factories to stop the flow of weapons and supplies, you are going to kill very large numbers of civilians. And before the reflexive comment: simultaneously I'm not condoning intentionally targeting civilians as an appropriate means of instilling terror or capitulation.
niels_olson 10y ago
> Soviets That would be some seriously revisionist history that would horrify the Japanese. My goodness. You should visit Japan some time.
chx 10y ago
> I don't doubt it saved more lives than it took > I'm not sure there's a clear answer there. You need to investigate your beliefs. I will not make a stand, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing... a long going debate.
- sillysaurus3 10y ago
  I'm not sure what to think, but here's an interesting argument. What would the counterargument look like? "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker. Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months fighting. Collectively, the defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded. The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians, caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa -- and the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending their homeland -- Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance could not. Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman's decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman's decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, "We'll end the war sooner now. And think of the kids who wont be killed." Horrible as the effects of the two atomic bombs were, the number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as compared with the potential number an invasion could have caused is small indeed."
pjys 10y ago
They sure teach the kids well in US schools.
- stana 10y ago
  I grew up in the Balkans and was taught in school that assassination of Franc Ferdinand in Sarajevo was jusified act to free South Slavic people from German oppression. To justify the aftermath of WWI - the education at the time said the World War I would have happened anyway. Moved out West and obviously introduced to a few different interpretations of the event, but it took a few years to start to question what I was taught early on and that maybe it is not 100% what would have happend in regards to WWI if not for the assassination.
  - rosege 10y ago
    maybe what you were taught wasnt so wrong - I've heard that the British (but I assume Germans, French too) were beginning to prepare for war and were expecting it to start
ck2 10y ago
By this logic, the US should just nuke any area causing problems for it. Iraq invades Kuwait? Nuke it. North Korea developing weapons of mass destruction? Nuke it. Why mess around with invasions. Note the scientists who developed the bomb begged the US government to first drop one off the coast of Japan to demonstrate to them what they were facing. Instead we killed tens of thousands of civilians on purpose, not once, but went back a second time. The lucky ones were vaporized instantly. The unlucky ones died over weeks in horrible pain from radiation and mass organ failure.
- tim333 10y ago
  Well not really. Estimates for the cost of invading Japan were approx 1m US casualties, 5m Japanese. None of the above issues produce anything like that.
  - ck2 10y ago
    Now explain why we decided to vaporize tens of thousands more civilians a few days later.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      A few days later than what?
      - e12e 10y ago
        August 6th, 1945: bombing of Hiroshima August 9th, bombing of Nagasaki August 15th, Japan surrenders. One could note that the two bombs were of different design, that both were tested on real cities and real human beings. As for whether or not Soviet or the bombs won the war - or if the bombs made much difference that waiting would not have; it's hard to judge. Here's one take on it: http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/ http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08...
        10y ago
ayyghost 10y ago
> However I may feel about the bomb having been used, I don't doubt it saved more lives than it took. There's absolutely no clear answer to this question, even among military historians, so I'm not sure how you can have no doubt about it.
nkoren 10y ago
This counterfactual loses much of its appeal when you learn that Japan was beaten and had been trying, through back channels, to conditionally surrender for months prior to the bombing. Their sole condition was guaranteed safety for the Emperor: the US refused to grant this, and so the fighting continued. As history shows, the US had no intention of harming the emperor -- so why wouldn't it accept this condition? And why did it target civilians, rather than (as the Los Alamos scientists had called for) a demonstration just off the coast which would have made the point equally well?
- lotharbot 10y ago
  Seems like every time this topic comes up, there are people who seem to "know" a lot of things, and on occasion they can point to real documentation -- letters that can be traced to people in the presidential cabinet, for example -- but very often the things people "know" turn out to be speculative, or after-the-fact rationalizations, or connecting dots that were known individually by people in different parts of the government but who didn't have a way to connect with each other. So my question is, how well documented was the Japanese back-channel surrender offer? Is it documented that it was made to legitimate decision-makers through those back channels?
  - fenomas 10y ago
    It's many years since I visited, but the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima has an exhibit that appeared to cover the evidence surrounding this pretty exhaustively. My vague recollection is that most of it was evidence of perception on the US side that Japan was ready to surrender - as opposed to evidence about specific back-channel negotiations.
  - nxzero 10y ago
    Question should not be how well it is documented, but why it is not well documented.
    - kctess5 10y ago
      I feel like this is akin to asking why the staging of the moon landing was not more well documented.

by mevile 10y ago

hudibras 10y ago

If the U.S. had instead somehow parachuted in 200,000 troops to Hiroshima, and then lined up and shot to death 100,000 men, women, children, elderly people, hospital patients, etc., and then burned every building down to the ground, would that be okay? What if by doing so it would end the war? Even if there were going to be many U.S. military casualties (which I doubt, although I know this is debatable), that doesn't in any way justify killing civilians. It's a tragedy of World War 2 (and Korea and Vietnam to lesser extents) that our leaders thought this was an appropriate way to fight a war.

sukilot 10y ago
Why do soldiers deserve to die more than civilians? This is not obvious. Soldiers by and large are not enrolled in war by virtue of free choice among competitive options.
- slededit 10y ago
  Soldiers have the means to defend themselves.
adventured 10y ago
> that doesn't in any way justify killing civilians WW2 wasn't just a war, it was absolute war: the survival of nations and perhaps hundreds of millions of people were on the line. In absolute war, most of the resources of the nation, including most of its labor pool, is put into war supply mode. That is a critical distinction. Killing civilians was inherently necessary, as they worked the manufacturing plants that supplied the weapons. If you intend to destroy the factories to stop the flow of weapons and supplies, you are going to kill very large numbers of civilians. And before the reflexive comment: simultaneously I'm not condoning intentionally targeting civilians as an appropriate means of instilling terror or capitulation.

niels_olson 10y ago

> Soviets That would be some seriously revisionist history that would horrify the Japanese. My goodness. You should visit Japan some time.

chx 10y ago

> I don't doubt it saved more lives than it took > I'm not sure there's a clear answer there. You need to investigate your beliefs. I will not make a stand, there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing... a long going debate.

sillysaurus3 10y ago
I'm not sure what to think, but here's an interesting argument. What would the counterargument look like? "When Okinawa was finally declared secure, the cost had been horrific. Some 150,000 Okinawans died, approximately one-third the island's population. An additional 10,000 Koreans, used by the Japanese military as slave labor, died as well. Of the 119,000 or so Japanese soldiers, as many as 112,000 were killed in the battle or forever sealed inside a collapsed cave or bunker. Aside from the human cost, most of the physical aspects of Okinawan culture were razed. Few buildings survived the 3 months fighting. Collectively, the defenders lost more dead than the Japanese suffered in the two atomic bombings combined. The United States lost 13,000 dead: almost 8,000 on the island and the remainder at sea; another 32,000 were wounded. The loss of life on both sides, particularly among the Japanese civilians, caused immense worry in Washington. New President Harry Truman was looking at the plans for a proposed assault on the Japanese main islands, and the casualty projections were unacceptable. Projections numbered the potential casualties from 100,000 in the first 30 days to as many as 1 million attackers, and the death count for the Japanese civilians would be impossible to calculate. If they resisted as strongly as did the citizens of Okinawa -- and the inhabitants of the home islands would be even more dedicated to defending their homeland -- Japan would become a wasteland. It was already looking like one in many areas. The U.S. bombing campaign, in place since the previous September, was burning out huge areas of Japanese cities. How much longer the Japanese could have held out in the face of the fire bombing is a matter of much dispute; some project that, had the incendiary raids continued until November, the Japanese would have been thrown back to an almost Stone Age existence. The problem was this: no one in the west knew exactly what was happening in Japan. The devastation could be estimated, but the resistance could not. Thus, with the casualties of the Okinawa battle fresh in his mind, when Truman learned of the successful testing of an atomic bomb, he ordered its use. This is a decision debated since 6 August 1945, the date of the bombing of Hiroshima, and even before. Just what was known of Japanese decision-making processes before that date is also argued to this day. Was the Japanese government in the process of formulating a peace offer, in spite of the demand for unconditional surrender the Allies had decided upon in February 1943? If they were doing so, did anyone in the west know about it? Who knew what, when they knew it, and what effect that knowledge had or may have had on Truman's decision making is a matter of much dispute. Whatever the political ramifications of the atomic bomb on the immediate and postwar world, Truman's decision was certainly based in no small part on the nature of the fighting on Okinawa. Truman wrote just after his decision, "We'll end the war sooner now. And think of the kids who wont be killed." Horrible as the effects of the two atomic bombs were, the number of casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as compared with the potential number an invasion could have caused is small indeed."

pjys 10y ago

They sure teach the kids well in US schools.

stana 10y ago
I grew up in the Balkans and was taught in school that assassination of Franc Ferdinand in Sarajevo was jusified act to free South Slavic people from German oppression. To justify the aftermath of WWI - the education at the time said the World War I would have happened anyway. Moved out West and obviously introduced to a few different interpretations of the event, but it took a few years to start to question what I was taught early on and that maybe it is not 100% what would have happend in regards to WWI if not for the assassination.
- rosege 10y ago
  maybe what you were taught wasnt so wrong - I've heard that the British (but I assume Germans, French too) were beginning to prepare for war and were expecting it to start

ck2 10y ago

By this logic, the US should just nuke any area causing problems for it. Iraq invades Kuwait? Nuke it. North Korea developing weapons of mass destruction? Nuke it. Why mess around with invasions. Note the scientists who developed the bomb begged the US government to first drop one off the coast of Japan to demonstrate to them what they were facing. Instead we killed tens of thousands of civilians on purpose, not once, but went back a second time. The lucky ones were vaporized instantly. The unlucky ones died over weeks in horrible pain from radiation and mass organ failure.

tim333 10y ago
Well not really. Estimates for the cost of invading Japan were approx 1m US casualties, 5m Japanese. None of the above issues produce anything like that.
- ck2 10y ago
  Now explain why we decided to vaporize tens of thousands more civilians a few days later.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    A few days later than what?
    - e12e 10y ago
      August 6th, 1945: bombing of Hiroshima August 9th, bombing of Nagasaki August 15th, Japan surrenders. One could note that the two bombs were of different design, that both were tested on real cities and real human beings. As for whether or not Soviet or the bombs won the war - or if the bombs made much difference that waiting would not have; it's hard to judge. Here's one take on it: http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/ http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08...
      - 10y ago

ayyghost 10y ago

> However I may feel about the bomb having been used, I don't doubt it saved more lives than it took. There's absolutely no clear answer to this question, even among military historians, so I'm not sure how you can have no doubt about it.

nkoren 10y ago

This counterfactual loses much of its appeal when you learn that Japan was beaten and had been trying, through back channels, to conditionally surrender for months prior to the bombing. Their sole condition was guaranteed safety for the Emperor: the US refused to grant this, and so the fighting continued. As history shows, the US had no intention of harming the emperor -- so why wouldn't it accept this condition? And why did it target civilians, rather than (as the Los Alamos scientists had called for) a demonstration just off the coast which would have made the point equally well?

lotharbot 10y ago
Seems like every time this topic comes up, there are people who seem to "know" a lot of things, and on occasion they can point to real documentation -- letters that can be traced to people in the presidential cabinet, for example -- but very often the things people "know" turn out to be speculative, or after-the-fact rationalizations, or connecting dots that were known individually by people in different parts of the government but who didn't have a way to connect with each other. So my question is, how well documented was the Japanese back-channel surrender offer? Is it documented that it was made to legitimate decision-makers through those back channels?
- fenomas 10y ago
  It's many years since I visited, but the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima has an exhibit that appeared to cover the evidence surrounding this pretty exhaustively. My vague recollection is that most of it was evidence of perception on the US side that Japan was ready to surrender - as opposed to evidence about specific back-channel negotiations.
- nxzero 10y ago
  Question should not be how well it is documented, but why it is not well documented.
  - kctess5 10y ago
    I feel like this is akin to asking why the staging of the moon landing was not more well documented.