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As a student of WW2, millions of Japanese lives were saved by the atomic bombs: 1) Japanese military leaders were planning to continue fighting until no citize
by captain_perl 8y ago
As a student of WW2, millions of Japanese lives were saved by the atomic bombs:
1) Japanese military leaders were planning to continue fighting until no citizens were left: "even if the Japanese people die, their spirit will live on."
Surrender rates in previous island battles were on the order of 1% (ie. 99% killed or seriously injured.)
2) the Japanese people were facing starvation had the war continued. The early surrender helped with the rebuilding effort and prevented the nation from literally starving to death.
3) American leaders chose to bomb secondary cities, rather than completely destroy Tokyo, a capital city
4) had Russia invaded Japan, they typically would de-industrialize the enemy by transporting power plants and other facilities back to Russia
5) Japan actually refused to surrender to the USA. The emperor's broadcast never used the word, and the leader who signed the surrender document was approx. #10 in the leadership hierarchy.
The emperor was a serious amateur microbiologist and realized what an atomic bomb was, so did not need convincing that the war was lost.
(He was against starting the war with China and the USA and said so, but faced assassination and constitutional issues if he made a serious effort to change sentiment.)
- Synaesthesia 8y agoThis is not true, serious military figures in the US armed forces concluded that Japan was utterly defeated and was making peace feelers. They were basically defenseless at that stage of the war, against the bombing raids. The civilian massacre could have been prevented by merely demonstrating the bomb. However they chose to experiment by dropping it on an city.
- kungtotte 8y agoTwo cities. They didn't stop at one, they did it twice.
- iforgotpassword 8y agoSure, since they didn't surrender after the first one. And there might have been a third one...
- kungtotte 8y agoYeah, three days seems a reasonable time to wait before having another go after using the first nuclear bomb offensively in the history of mankind. Stupid Japanese for not surrendering immediately...
- Latteland 8y agoI think it's more complicated than that. There were at least some people who were not planning to surrender. If it was up to me, I would have probably dropped it on a mostly uninhabited island near Japan. It's probably true we wanted to scare the Russians with our new super weapon. But the big question is if Japan was close to surrendering anyway is why didn't Japan surrender after the first one, why did it take a second one?
- baddox 8y agoErnest Lawrence, who worked on the Manhattan Project (and won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the cyclotron), famously recommended a non-lethal demonstration of the bombs: > At the May 31 meeting, Lawrence suggested that a demonstration of the atomic bomb might possibly convince the Japanese to surrender. This was rejected, however, out of fear that the bomb might be a dud, that the Japanese might put American prisoners of war in the area, or that they might manage to shoot down the plane. The shock value of the new weapon could also be lost. https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/debate.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event...
- olavk 8y agoI think this ignores the historical context. The US had air control and been bombing the mainland relentlessly for a while. The firebombing of Tokyo had already caused bigger loss of life than the Hiroshima bomb did. So it was clear to both parties that the US did have the destructive capability and were willing to use it. This did not cause the Japanese to surrender. Why would it have made any difference to "demonstrate" the bomb, if actually bombing the capital and killing 100000 did not have that effect? Even after the second bomb, just before announcing the surrender, there was an attempted coup d'etat by high ranking officers to prevent the surrender. So its not like surrender was a given after seeing a nuclear bomb. It is only in retrospect it seems obvious that the nuclear bomb would lead to surrender. Even taking about "the decision to drop the bomb" as it was some unique moral dilemma is kind of anachronistic. Of course they were going to drop the bomb, just like they used any other weapon at their disposal.
- jacobush 8y agoDon't forget demonstrating both ability and willingness to the keen onlooker standing eagerly in the wings: the Soviet Union. It was ready to take on a weakened Japan in a drawn out conflict. Also, who knew what ambitions there were for Europe? Best nip any grand ambitions in the bud. (The Soviet Union was still some years away from having nuclear bombs.)
- caf 8y agoTokyo was off the initial atomic bombing target list because it had already been mostly destroyed by firebombing.
- GlennS 8y agoThis is incorrect. The Japanese were trying to negotiate surrender through the Russians, with their sole condition being that they could keep their Emperor. The Russians had not informed the USA. The USA knew all of this, because they had cracked the Japanese codes and read their messages. So yes, dropping the bombs was a straightforward attrocity.
- dralley 8y agoAll these points are fair except for #3. Tokyo was already burnt to the ground during the firebombing campaign.