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I use this example when discussing the context of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing. While any bombing is tragic, the atomic bombs are not worse than ot

I use this example when discussing the context of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing. While any bombing is tragic, the atomic bombs are not worse than other. This single air raid killed more people than Little Boy or Fat Man, and while hundreds of thousands of people died in the March-June strategic bombing of all major Japanese cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Firebombing_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Firebombing..., the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender. I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.

wozer 5y ago
> While any bombing is tragic, the atomic bombs are not worse than other. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think atomic bombs are much worse because using atomic bombs you can destroy a whole country in a matter of minutes.
InTheArena 5y ago
The Bomb was unique in that it was purely psychological in nature. It was a weapon that removed any chance that the Japanese leaders could sacrifice their own people to buy their escape from the war. This was literally the policy of the Japanese government - "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million". Sacrifice every Japanese life to preserve the Emperor, and more importantly, his militaristic governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall There is a awful lot of moral relativism in these threads. Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that there was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the western powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in World War 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep dive into what these states were really about.
- mmustapic 5y ago
  And the US was fine going along. "We'll keep killing civilians till you surrender".
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    What is your alternative? Starvation Blockade, or military invasion? Do you understand what the Japanese state did to the Chinese and other peoples of southeast Asian and westerners?
    - mmustapic 5y ago
      Yes, they killed civilians hoping they will surrender.
      - eitland 5y ago
        The point is the WWII Nazis and Japanese are famous for killing / torturing people even after they surrendered. I'm not saying others didn't, but Nazis and Japanese took it to another level than the west. (Although to be fair Sovjet Communists should be mentioned together with them.)
        mmustapic 5y ago
        Yes, you are correct, Nazis and Japanese committed war crimes. And the US dropped not one, but two atomic bombs to majorly civilian population centers. Different scales, different philosophy, but mass murder of civilians just the same.
        InTheArena 5y ago
        As pointed out many times - under any definition at the time, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki where military targets. On the other other Kyoto was not - and was removed because of that.
        mmustapic 5y ago
        The definition of "military target" was an arbitrary definition (like most definitions) done by those who decided to bomb them. Kyoto was also a possible target favoured by the military, and it was replaced by Nagasaki. And as you know, Hiroshima was chosen because it was undamaged and the effects of the bomb could be studied. So we can add "weapons testing on civilians" to the list of crimes.
- Aidevah 5y ago
  >Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that there was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the western powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in World War 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep dive into what these states were really about. There is no moral equivalence between the allies and the axis. But even a just war can be waged unjustly by the good side. Is it really a good look to compete with the most vicious regimes in history how cruelly one can treat one's opponents, particularly those who are just caught on the wrong side? Is it collective punishment to treat an entire civilian population under military dictatorship as culpable as the members of the junta themselves? Even if it's collateral damage, under what circumstances is it justifiable to burn to death 100000 men women and children in one night? I don't see moral relativism in raising these questions at all, rather a consistent moral stance which applies the same standards to all scenarios, friend or foe.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    If it's a question of "[competing] with the most vicious regimes in history how cruelly one can treat one's opponents", then the US lost very badly to Japan. "As can be seen, nearly one out of every one-hundred people controlled by Japan [between 1937 and 1945] was murdered, or almost three per thousand people per year." (https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM)
boomboomsubban 5y ago
And I'm not the only one that thinks you could have achieved the same results by publicly dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on something besides civilian targets.
- nradov 5y ago
  Perhaps, but at the time the supply of nuclear weapons was very small. US leaders weren't sure how many they would need to use in order to compel an unconditional surrender so they couldn't afford to waste one on a demonstration and then potentially be caught short.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    We already "wasted" one on a demonstration, and what was the great risk of being caught short? Japan potentially faces another round of conventional bombing?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      The trinity test was a proof of concept. It was not anything close to a production ready bomb.
      - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        From Wikipedia: > The Trinity Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device, as was the Fat Man used a few weeks later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The two were very similar, with only minor differences, the most obvious being the absence of fuzing and the external ballistic casing. The bombs were still under development, and small changes continued to be made to the Fat Man design. So, not identical. But "not anything close" seems wrong.
- InTheArena 5y ago
  This was debated at the time. It was ultimately rejected: 1) What if the bomb didn't work? 2) What if the bomb was recovered by the Japanese? 3) What if they ignored the demonstration? 4) What if a single Allied soldier died who would not have died if they had dropped it on a military target? I suggest the first two books of Richard Rhode's book "Making of the Atomic Bomb", which goes into this.
the_af 5y ago
> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. You're not the only one, but most of the people who believe like you are Americans. Outside the US the prevalent view is pretty much against those atomic bombings; had the US lost the war, the people who ordered those bombings would have been found guilty of war crimes and hanged. My own subjective opinion is that the US needs this narrative of "but we ended up saving lives", because anything else would run contrary to their own self image of "we are always the good guys". Consequently, alternative considerations like that the bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union as the target audience tend to get downplayed in the US, because it's harder to think of oneself as the good guy when you killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in one country in order to put fear into the leadership of another, unrelated country.
- golergka 5y ago
  > Consequently, alternative considerations like that the bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union But how is that an alternative? Showing force to Soviet Union would ALSO save millions of lives.
  - the_af 5y ago
    What do you mean? Regarding the coming Cold War, then MAD, etc? I find that kind of reasoning troubling. It can be used to justify pretty awful things. This is a completely made up example for the sake of argument, a reduction to the absurd, but suppose they decide that vaporizing Africa, Asia and parts of Europe is better for world peace long-term... should they do it? "Sure, billions will die, but trust us that long term more lives will be saved in the coming centuries". Ok, so do we push the red button then?
- InTheArena 5y ago
  Speaking as a historian, The atomic bombs being horrible weapons that at the time where strategically justified is the consensus view among non-populist historians. There is a secondary view that it was done to an eye of using the bomb as a threat to Stalin, but all research of the decision makers does not reveal this to be the case. In fact, the research shows over and over that the Americans where desperate to get the Russians into the pacific theater. The view that the use of the atomic bomb was a effort to threaten Stalin and keep the Russians from the war was popularized by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book in 2005, but that book has been pretty much discredited in historical communities. A example analysis is here: https://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html https://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html It's also not that the United States opinion diverges from much of the world. Outside of Japan, most countries have a similar percentage of people who view that it was justified or not. (79% of Japanese thing it was unjustified versus 44% of Americans).
myrmidon 5y ago
> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. Probably more of a modern rationalization/justification for the bombings and quite questionable. Consider: The US strategic bombing survey (an "impartial assessment of the effects of strategic bombing") concluded: > "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous sources out of context and uncritically. USSBS was basically the same people who had been advocating massive strategic bombing the entire war writing up a report on how effective their own efforts had been. They're not going to come out and say "Yeah, we achieved nothing in Japan and it was only the nukes or Soviets that had any effect". That's not to say the report is useless, just read things more critically. Whether the bombs were the sole-cause of the surrender is a rather different discussion, and one I understand few historians would argue. It seems difficult to argue that they had no effect given that we now have records of what Japanese leadership was discussing at the time and atomics feature prominently, alongside the soviet invasion. That's why the whole consensus school thing exists, because neither was obviously definitive.
  - myrmidon 5y ago
    > It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous sources out of context and uncritically Sure. But to be fair-- there were tons of civilian experts involved that had no great personal stake; It's not like it was written by arms manufacturer lobbyists or generals personally involved in past decision making. And I'm mostly missing strong fact-based counterarguments, so my personal opinion is going to remain that the atomic bombings probably expedited Japans surrender, but were not necessary (nor would a ground invasion have been).
ezconnect 5y ago
I would have agreed on the use of the atomic bomb if they didn't use it on a city. They could have demonstrated on a smaller island or a navy outpost near Japan or on Japan. The US have shown no pity bombing city and killing innocents during world war 2 so I think for the US generals showing off your new bomb by erasing two city is a good strategy for them.
- avereveard 5y ago
  You're thinking as a modern man. The public in Japan would have heard nothing about a show of force done in the middle of nowhere. Heck, for all the public was concerned, the naval war had been going great.
  - ezconnect 5y ago
    The public does not decide what to do on an ongoing war specially during the imperial Japanese rule or any modern war with an organized army. The Americans just have a habit of destroying city with non combatants during world war 2, they've done it in Europe and Asia.
hristov 5y ago
"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." You are absolutely wrong about that. A cursory examination would reveal that Japan was ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. There was only one condition that they get to keep their emperor, but the allies ended up following that condition even after the unconditional surrender, so that just wasn't relevant. And the logic that the atomic bombs were not that bad because there were even worse bombings is just wrong.
- s5300 5y ago
  There’s a small bit of truth to the A-bombs saving japanese/American lives if negotiations of surrender were to fall through But I think modern day, the A-bombs are largely viewed as a show of force against the Soviets. Sort of like D-Day was so Soviets couldn’t steamroll Germany & then take all of Europe as well…
- dpedu 5y ago
  > A cursory examination would reveal that Japan was ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. There was only one condition that they get to keep their emperor, but the allies ended up following that condition even after the unconditional surrender, so that just wasn't relevant. So what you're actually saying is, they weren't willing to surrender under the terms offered to them?
- fatbird 5y ago
  This is incorrect. We have the diary of Shigenori Tojo, foreign minister of Japan in August 1945. He describes in detail the cabinet proceedings before and after the dropping of the bombs. Even after the bombs were dropped, half the cabinet (the military half) was still holding out for the terms they'd been offering all along: no foreign occupation, Japan retreats to pre-war borders, Japan handles its won disarmament, and Japan retains the Imperial gov't, meaning the whole structure that started the war in the first place. The Emperor overruled them, but only did so after dropping the bombs because Japan has a long history of emperors being sequestered by the Shogun or cabinet when they did not respect the prerogatives of the actual governing entity. What the Japanese actually offered for surrender was unconditional surrender except for being allowed to keep a figurehead emperor, which the U.S. recognized as useful for governing post-war Japan, and accepted.
FpUser 5y ago
>"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." Oh please. Don't bring that saving lives bullshit here. The last thing the US cared about at that time was saving Japanese lives. War is an ugly business. So if you want to look warm and fuzzy stay out of it as much as possible.
xibalba 5y ago
> the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender The U.S. was on solid ground in its conduct of any form of bombing up until a Japanese surrender-including massive conventional bombing campaigns and atomic bombings. Japan launched an unprovoked attack on the U.S. at Pear Harbor to initiate hostilities. Fighting, as the U.S. approached mainland Japan, became more fierce and costly. Any number of dead Japanese—military or civilian, was better than one more dead U.S. serviceman.
vmception 5y ago
> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. I heard of the relentless Japanese insurgency growing up. My own research did not produce that result for the time leading up to the atomic bomb and I find the atomic bombing unnecessary. It is noteworthy that I am not comparing potential death tolls. I am comparing ionizing radiation though and its long tail effects, to the lack of them. I am also mostly of the opinion of the idea that Japan was going to surrender. There were a lot of proposals between fire bombing and nuclear bombs, some of the proposals are actually hilarious and others are pretty interesting and some even seem practical. My view of the atomic bombs were that they were dropped because we wanted to drop them. It doesn't cause me consternation to acknowledge that and I just wish other people would. We nuked two cities and told everyone else to never do it themselves, we even gave them their country back and let them whitewash all the education around the event, why not just say that? I view all of the moral and rationale arguments to be surprisingly juvenile, when at the end of the day we do things because we want to. Even when comparing potential allied lives saved, well, surprise!, we can still save allied lives by nuking everyone and its not an argument at all.
- fatbird 5y ago
  The Japanese surrender terms were flatly unacceptable: retention of the Imperial gov't, no foreign occupation of Japan, Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to pre-war borders, Japan handles their own disarmament and prosecution of Japanese war criminals. The surrender they were attempting to obtain was basically a rollback to the status quo of 1935. As early as mid-1944, the cabinet accepted that the war was unwinnable for them, and their strategy shifted to intransigent defence in the hope that by the time the U.S. cleared all the islands and showed up at the Home Islands, they'd be too exhausted to invade and would accept the above terms. At no time did they offer any terms of surrender less than the above, including after the dropping of the atomic bombs (according to the diary of the foreign minister Tojo). Indeed, after dropping both atomic bombs, half the cabinet still refused to surrender.
  - vmception 5y ago
    > The surrender they were attempting to obtain was basically a rollback to the status quo of 1935. Can you tell me more about the status quo of 1935 and why that was a problem for the US or allies? I know it is a different Japan that did brutal things in the region, but they didn't attack US then and they weren't doing.. anything relevant to the allies. The stuff in Europe was the issue. am I missing something?
huevosabio 5y ago
Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast episode on this, he called it Logical Insanity [0]. The main argument being that by the time of the atomic bombs, all powers had scaled their "strategic bombings" of civilians to a level that made the atomic bombs just a small step in the logical conclusion of the path of the war. We should not judge the atomic bombings without the context of US, UK, USSR and Japanese bombings of civilians. [0] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-...
- beerandt 5y ago
  He describes the fire bombing of Tokyo in a way (using primary sources) that definitely makes getting nuked seem not so bad by comparison. Both physically and psychologically.
hungryforcodes 5y ago
"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." Anything to justify the bombing, huh?
spenvo 5y ago
IMO, the Japanese surrender had just as much to do with the USSR opening a new front against the country (less than a month before) with its massive invasion of Manchuria, and its capitulation was similar in a way to German forces moving west to surrender to the US instead of the USSR.
WalterBright 5y ago
It wasn't just Japanese lives that were at stake. An invasion of Japan was estimated to cost 1 million US military lives.
mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power. This was actually in the original surrender draft, but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so he removed the provision at the last minute. In the end we dropped the bombs and then let the emperor stay in power anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemm...
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  > Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power. Conjecture > but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so Also conjecture
  - mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
    not really, I saw a documentary about it when I was in Japan.
    - CrazyStat 5y ago
      ... that doesn't make it not conjecture.
- js2 5y ago
  Re: Truman wanted to drop the bombs. > At the time, the president seemed conflicted over his decision. The day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people believed “that we should continue to strike the Japanese until they are brought groveling to their knees.” Truman responded, “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.” ... > Looking back, President Truman never shirked personal responsibility for his decision, but neither did he apologize. He asserted that he would not use the bomb in later conflicts, such as Korea. Nevertheless, given the same circumstances and choices that confronted him in Japan in 1945, he said he would do exactly the same thing. https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm
baybal2 5y ago
> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. Relatively speaking, 330000 civilian deaths is surprisingly low in comparison to the war in Europe. USSR lost few percents of the population immediately after the war due to starvation. Civilian losses to enemy troops were horrific enough without any airforce involved. Count went into millions in first years of the war, and the German civilian losses during communist counterattack got as sizeable within months.
thomasmarriott 5y ago
'...Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization...' — Hirohito, August 14,1945
leto_ii 5y ago
> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. I used to share that same conventional view, but the following comprehensive piece really changed my mind: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiroshima-nagasaki-american-militarism/ https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiroshima-nagasaki-ameri...
bigodbiel 5y ago
This is one of the reasons why I agree with the theory that Japan’s capitulation was only because the Soviets did not renew their non aggression pact.
vanusa 5y ago
I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. You can believe that if you want of course - but it seems simplistic at best to ignore other factors, such as the planned Soviet entry into the war on August 15. And some believe even that wouldn't have been necessary: Asked in 1945 for his opinion on dropping the atomic bomb, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower replied: “I was against it on two counts. First the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Roosevelt and Truman, flatly declared that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Even the official US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded unequivocally that “Japan would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
- caycep 5y ago
  Also, history written by the victors...convenient to convey Curtis Lemay as a war hero vs. a war criminal that signed off on a raid designed to purposefully incinerate civilians. Whose ethnicity were constantly dehumanized as part of the psy-ops of conducting the war...
  - dralley 5y ago
    History is not necessarily written by the victors, fwiw. Victors frequently end up too busy running the government to write history books whereas the losers sometimes end up with a lot of free time and motivation. See: Lots of pro-Confederate "history", lots of history from ancient times
    - caycep 5y ago
      "frequently" yes...but with the Pacific theater histories - most of what I've seen and also what's being quoted in the arguments below re "Would Japan have surrendered without the A bomb" are from books by primarily American or British historians, or even the Pentagon's own internal study. This is one conflict where I am not seeing a ton of Japanese academia weighing in. Why, who knows - maybe it isn't a hot topic for current academic research, maybe because of language barriers, engrained biases, etc, (maybe are a lot more Japanese academic works in Japan itself, but not getting a lot of traction here, who knows...) To whit, a lot of the quotes being thrown around to support the "Japan would have never surrendered without the A-bomb" seem(at least on my reading) to suggest there was a lot more debate amongst the civilian and military (Japan AND US Navy) higher ups that were assumed at the time, and who knows what would have happened had more diplomatic measures been tried?
gumby 5y ago
For many many years I didn't understand why the atomic bomb was considered somehow "worse" than mass firebombing like Tokyo or Dresden. In the end a friend gave me a good explanation (ironically a Japanese friend who'd attended high school in the US). He said it seemed "unfair" because only one bomb was dropped, while in a mass attack, seemingly much more effort is expended by the attacker and, more importantly, the target has a "chance to fight back" (forget how ineffective anti aircraft fire was in those days, and still is). After learning that, when this topic came up I would query about where the objections lay and surprisingly, my friend's explanation was quite common -- probably the majority -- even if the person didn't frame it that way. A disturbing quirk of human nature
gumby 5y ago
A lot of criticism of the atomic bombing is context free 20-20 hindsight. Big armies are like huge complex ships: they take a while to get moving, are hard to steer and hard to stop. So one can criticize the destruction of Dresden, but you also have to remember that the UK had built a machine that threw planes into the air and there was little correlation between the amount of armaments being sent and the number of targets available (or accounting to reduced opposition). Yet that machine was a small part of a huge effort, and was probably only paid attention to by the high command when something went wrong. And not to mention the rage and anger on the part of a bunch of people who had been bombed themselves for years. My wife grew up near a town in Germany that was bombed for the first time, and utterly flattened, in late April 1945. Absolutely no strategic value; they had simply wiped out everything above it on the list so now it was their turn. I never heard anyone complain about it (and boy old people were happy to give you an earful about all sorts of things). For more lack of retrospective context: As for the atomic bomb, don't forget Turman only heard about it when he became president. And all sorts of facts that seem clear today were completely unclear back then. What would the soviets actually do? Was Okinawa an example of what the invasion would be like? Japan still occupied Manchuria and other parts of Asia. Intelligence on the risks the Allies faced was still thin. And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  > Absolutely no strategic value Was there industry in or near the town that supported the German war effort? Were there German military units stationed in or near the town? I'm not saying it's right but the term "strategic value" had a very different definition in WWII. Any and all war effort or suspected war effort had "strategic value". > And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre. I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread occurrence?
  - thetallstick 5y ago
    >> And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre. > I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread occurrence? I also never heard of widespread armed rebellion but definitely there was a lot of animosity over who got to go home, who got to stay, and who had to go to the Pacific. I would not have wanted that job. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/points-system-us-armys-demobilization https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/points-system...
bonsoir 5y ago
Copium
jacquesm 5y ago
Let me be blunt: what you believe isn't relevant. It happened the way it did and what the other leg of that choice contains is something that nobody knows and therefore debating it is pointless. What we do know is that a great crime was committed, the balance of which is also irrelevant, because whether one, ten, ten thousand or 100,000 or even millions of Japanese lives would been saved we do not know. But we do know how many were lost.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pmoriarty 5y ago
"...two days before President Roosevelt left for the Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in early February 1945, he was shown a forty-page memorandum drafted by General MacArthur outlining a Japanese offer for surrender almost identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, President Truman. The single difference was the Japanese insistence on retention of the emperor, which was not acceptable to the American strategists at the time, though it was ultimately allowed in the final peace terms... "Specifically, the terms of the Japanese peace offers of late January 1945 were as follows: Full surrender of the Japanese forces, air, land and sea, at home and in all occupied countries. Surrender of all arms and ammunition. Agreement of the Japanese to occupation of their homeland and island possessions. Relinquishment of Manchuria, Korea and Formosa. Regulation of Japanese industry. Surrender of designated war criminals for trial. Release of all prisoners. "Other than retention of the emperor these terms were identical to the final surrender terms." https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/129964 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/129964
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Don't forget that the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were early ones with very limited yields. Imagining a modern bombardment that's worse than a modern nuke is very difficult, especially when you take fallout, radiation poisoning and pollution into account.
lm28469 5y ago
> the atomic bombs are not worse than other. ??? besides horrible deaths by radiation poisoning, increased cancer risk and genetic defects ? This is like dying by firing squad vs being eaten alive by dogs, sure you still end up dead but one is clearly worse than the other.

wozer 5y ago

> While any bombing is tragic, the atomic bombs are not worse than other. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think atomic bombs are much worse because using atomic bombs you can destroy a whole country in a matter of minutes.

InTheArena 5y ago

The Bomb was unique in that it was purely psychological in nature. It was a weapon that removed any chance that the Japanese leaders could sacrifice their own people to buy their escape from the war. This was literally the policy of the Japanese government - "The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million". Sacrifice every Japanese life to preserve the Emperor, and more importantly, his militaristic governments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall There is a awful lot of moral relativism in these threads. Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that there was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the western powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in World War 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep dive into what these states were really about.

mmustapic 5y ago
And the US was fine going along. "We'll keep killing civilians till you surrender".
- InTheArena 5y ago
  What is your alternative? Starvation Blockade, or military invasion? Do you understand what the Japanese state did to the Chinese and other peoples of southeast Asian and westerners?
  - mmustapic 5y ago
    Yes, they killed civilians hoping they will surrender.
    - eitland 5y ago
      The point is the WWII Nazis and Japanese are famous for killing / torturing people even after they surrendered. I'm not saying others didn't, but Nazis and Japanese took it to another level than the west. (Although to be fair Sovjet Communists should be mentioned together with them.)
      - mmustapic 5y ago
        Yes, you are correct, Nazis and Japanese committed war crimes. And the US dropped not one, but two atomic bombs to majorly civilian population centers. Different scales, different philosophy, but mass murder of civilians just the same.
        InTheArena 5y ago
        As pointed out many times - under any definition at the time, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki where military targets. On the other other Kyoto was not - and was removed because of that.
        mmustapic 5y ago
        The definition of "military target" was an arbitrary definition (like most definitions) done by those who decided to bomb them. Kyoto was also a possible target favoured by the military, and it was replaced by Nagasaki. And as you know, Hiroshima was chosen because it was undamaged and the effects of the bomb could be studied. So we can add "weapons testing on civilians" to the list of crimes.
Aidevah 5y ago
>Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that there was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the western powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in World War 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep dive into what these states were really about. There is no moral equivalence between the allies and the axis. But even a just war can be waged unjustly by the good side. Is it really a good look to compete with the most vicious regimes in history how cruelly one can treat one's opponents, particularly those who are just caught on the wrong side? Is it collective punishment to treat an entire civilian population under military dictatorship as culpable as the members of the junta themselves? Even if it's collateral damage, under what circumstances is it justifiable to burn to death 100000 men women and children in one night? I don't see moral relativism in raising these questions at all, rather a consistent moral stance which applies the same standards to all scenarios, friend or foe.
- mcguire 5y ago
  If it's a question of "[competing] with the most vicious regimes in history how cruelly one can treat one's opponents", then the US lost very badly to Japan. "As can be seen, nearly one out of every one-hundred people controlled by Japan [between 1937 and 1945] was murdered, or almost three per thousand people per year." (https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM)

boomboomsubban 5y ago

And I'm not the only one that thinks you could have achieved the same results by publicly dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on something besides civilian targets.

nradov 5y ago
Perhaps, but at the time the supply of nuclear weapons was very small. US leaders weren't sure how many they would need to use in order to compel an unconditional surrender so they couldn't afford to waste one on a demonstration and then potentially be caught short.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  We already "wasted" one on a demonstration, and what was the great risk of being caught short? Japan potentially faces another round of conventional bombing?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    The trinity test was a proof of concept. It was not anything close to a production ready bomb.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      From Wikipedia: > The Trinity Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device, as was the Fat Man used a few weeks later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The two were very similar, with only minor differences, the most obvious being the absence of fuzing and the external ballistic casing. The bombs were still under development, and small changes continued to be made to the Fat Man design. So, not identical. But "not anything close" seems wrong.
InTheArena 5y ago
This was debated at the time. It was ultimately rejected: 1) What if the bomb didn't work? 2) What if the bomb was recovered by the Japanese? 3) What if they ignored the demonstration? 4) What if a single Allied soldier died who would not have died if they had dropped it on a military target? I suggest the first two books of Richard Rhode's book "Making of the Atomic Bomb", which goes into this.

the_af 5y ago

> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. You're not the only one, but most of the people who believe like you are Americans. Outside the US the prevalent view is pretty much against those atomic bombings; had the US lost the war, the people who ordered those bombings would have been found guilty of war crimes and hanged. My own subjective opinion is that the US needs this narrative of "but we ended up saving lives", because anything else would run contrary to their own self image of "we are always the good guys". Consequently, alternative considerations like that the bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union as the target audience tend to get downplayed in the US, because it's harder to think of oneself as the good guy when you killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in one country in order to put fear into the leadership of another, unrelated country.

golergka 5y ago
> Consequently, alternative considerations like that the bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union But how is that an alternative? Showing force to Soviet Union would ALSO save millions of lives.
- the_af 5y ago
  What do you mean? Regarding the coming Cold War, then MAD, etc? I find that kind of reasoning troubling. It can be used to justify pretty awful things. This is a completely made up example for the sake of argument, a reduction to the absurd, but suppose they decide that vaporizing Africa, Asia and parts of Europe is better for world peace long-term... should they do it? "Sure, billions will die, but trust us that long term more lives will be saved in the coming centuries". Ok, so do we push the red button then?
InTheArena 5y ago
Speaking as a historian, The atomic bombs being horrible weapons that at the time where strategically justified is the consensus view among non-populist historians. There is a secondary view that it was done to an eye of using the bomb as a threat to Stalin, but all research of the decision makers does not reveal this to be the case. In fact, the research shows over and over that the Americans where desperate to get the Russians into the pacific theater. The view that the use of the atomic bomb was a effort to threaten Stalin and keep the Russians from the war was popularized by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book in 2005, but that book has been pretty much discredited in historical communities. A example analysis is here: https://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html https://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html It's also not that the United States opinion diverges from much of the world. Outside of Japan, most countries have a similar percentage of people who view that it was justified or not. (79% of Japanese thing it was unjustified versus 44% of Americans).

myrmidon 5y ago

> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. Probably more of a modern rationalization/justification for the bombings and quite questionable. Consider: The US strategic bombing survey (an "impartial assessment of the effects of strategic bombing") concluded: > "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

AlotOfReading 5y ago
It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous sources out of context and uncritically. USSBS was basically the same people who had been advocating massive strategic bombing the entire war writing up a report on how effective their own efforts had been. They're not going to come out and say "Yeah, we achieved nothing in Japan and it was only the nukes or Soviets that had any effect". That's not to say the report is useless, just read things more critically. Whether the bombs were the sole-cause of the surrender is a rather different discussion, and one I understand few historians would argue. It seems difficult to argue that they had no effect given that we now have records of what Japanese leadership was discussing at the time and atomics feature prominently, alongside the soviet invasion. That's why the whole consensus school thing exists, because neither was obviously definitive.
- myrmidon 5y ago
  > It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous sources out of context and uncritically Sure. But to be fair-- there were tons of civilian experts involved that had no great personal stake; It's not like it was written by arms manufacturer lobbyists or generals personally involved in past decision making. And I'm mostly missing strong fact-based counterarguments, so my personal opinion is going to remain that the atomic bombings probably expedited Japans surrender, but were not necessary (nor would a ground invasion have been).

ezconnect 5y ago

I would have agreed on the use of the atomic bomb if they didn't use it on a city. They could have demonstrated on a smaller island or a navy outpost near Japan or on Japan. The US have shown no pity bombing city and killing innocents during world war 2 so I think for the US generals showing off your new bomb by erasing two city is a good strategy for them.

avereveard 5y ago
You're thinking as a modern man. The public in Japan would have heard nothing about a show of force done in the middle of nowhere. Heck, for all the public was concerned, the naval war had been going great.
- ezconnect 5y ago
  The public does not decide what to do on an ongoing war specially during the imperial Japanese rule or any modern war with an organized army. The Americans just have a habit of destroying city with non combatants during world war 2, they've done it in Europe and Asia.

hristov 5y ago

"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." You are absolutely wrong about that. A cursory examination would reveal that Japan was ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. There was only one condition that they get to keep their emperor, but the allies ended up following that condition even after the unconditional surrender, so that just wasn't relevant. And the logic that the atomic bombs were not that bad because there were even worse bombings is just wrong.

s5300 5y ago
There’s a small bit of truth to the A-bombs saving japanese/American lives if negotiations of surrender were to fall through But I think modern day, the A-bombs are largely viewed as a show of force against the Soviets. Sort of like D-Day was so Soviets couldn’t steamroll Germany & then take all of Europe as well…
dpedu 5y ago
> A cursory examination would reveal that Japan was ready to surrender before the bombs were dropped. There was only one condition that they get to keep their emperor, but the allies ended up following that condition even after the unconditional surrender, so that just wasn't relevant. So what you're actually saying is, they weren't willing to surrender under the terms offered to them?
fatbird 5y ago
This is incorrect. We have the diary of Shigenori Tojo, foreign minister of Japan in August 1945. He describes in detail the cabinet proceedings before and after the dropping of the bombs. Even after the bombs were dropped, half the cabinet (the military half) was still holding out for the terms they'd been offering all along: no foreign occupation, Japan retreats to pre-war borders, Japan handles its won disarmament, and Japan retains the Imperial gov't, meaning the whole structure that started the war in the first place. The Emperor overruled them, but only did so after dropping the bombs because Japan has a long history of emperors being sequestered by the Shogun or cabinet when they did not respect the prerogatives of the actual governing entity. What the Japanese actually offered for surrender was unconditional surrender except for being allowed to keep a figurehead emperor, which the U.S. recognized as useful for governing post-war Japan, and accepted.

FpUser 5y ago

>"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." Oh please. Don't bring that saving lives bullshit here. The last thing the US cared about at that time was saving Japanese lives. War is an ugly business. So if you want to look warm and fuzzy stay out of it as much as possible.

xibalba 5y ago

> the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender The U.S. was on solid ground in its conduct of any form of bombing up until a Japanese surrender-including massive conventional bombing campaigns and atomic bombings. Japan launched an unprovoked attack on the U.S. at Pear Harbor to initiate hostilities. Fighting, as the U.S. approached mainland Japan, became more fierce and costly. Any number of dead Japanese—military or civilian, was better than one more dead U.S. serviceman.

vmception 5y ago

> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. I heard of the relentless Japanese insurgency growing up. My own research did not produce that result for the time leading up to the atomic bomb and I find the atomic bombing unnecessary. It is noteworthy that I am not comparing potential death tolls. I am comparing ionizing radiation though and its long tail effects, to the lack of them. I am also mostly of the opinion of the idea that Japan was going to surrender. There were a lot of proposals between fire bombing and nuclear bombs, some of the proposals are actually hilarious and others are pretty interesting and some even seem practical. My view of the atomic bombs were that they were dropped because we wanted to drop them. It doesn't cause me consternation to acknowledge that and I just wish other people would. We nuked two cities and told everyone else to never do it themselves, we even gave them their country back and let them whitewash all the education around the event, why not just say that? I view all of the moral and rationale arguments to be surprisingly juvenile, when at the end of the day we do things because we want to. Even when comparing potential allied lives saved, well, surprise!, we can still save allied lives by nuking everyone and its not an argument at all.

fatbird 5y ago
The Japanese surrender terms were flatly unacceptable: retention of the Imperial gov't, no foreign occupation of Japan, Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to pre-war borders, Japan handles their own disarmament and prosecution of Japanese war criminals. The surrender they were attempting to obtain was basically a rollback to the status quo of 1935. As early as mid-1944, the cabinet accepted that the war was unwinnable for them, and their strategy shifted to intransigent defence in the hope that by the time the U.S. cleared all the islands and showed up at the Home Islands, they'd be too exhausted to invade and would accept the above terms. At no time did they offer any terms of surrender less than the above, including after the dropping of the atomic bombs (according to the diary of the foreign minister Tojo). Indeed, after dropping both atomic bombs, half the cabinet still refused to surrender.
- vmception 5y ago
  > The surrender they were attempting to obtain was basically a rollback to the status quo of 1935. Can you tell me more about the status quo of 1935 and why that was a problem for the US or allies? I know it is a different Japan that did brutal things in the region, but they didn't attack US then and they weren't doing.. anything relevant to the allies. The stuff in Europe was the issue. am I missing something?

huevosabio 5y ago

Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast episode on this, he called it Logical Insanity [0]. The main argument being that by the time of the atomic bombs, all powers had scaled their "strategic bombings" of civilians to a level that made the atomic bombs just a small step in the logical conclusion of the path of the war. We should not judge the atomic bombings without the context of US, UK, USSR and Japanese bombings of civilians. [0] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-logical-insanity/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-...

beerandt 5y ago
He describes the fire bombing of Tokyo in a way (using primary sources) that definitely makes getting nuked seem not so bad by comparison. Both physically and psychologically.

hungryforcodes 5y ago

"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives." Anything to justify the bombing, huh?

spenvo 5y ago

IMO, the Japanese surrender had just as much to do with the USSR opening a new front against the country (less than a month before) with its massive invasion of Manchuria, and its capitulation was similar in a way to German forces moving west to surrender to the US instead of the USSR.

WalterBright 5y ago

It wasn't just Japanese lives that were at stake. An invasion of Japan was estimated to cost 1 million US military lives.

mzvkxlcvd 5y ago

Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power. This was actually in the original surrender draft, but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so he removed the provision at the last minute. In the end we dropped the bombs and then let the emperor stay in power anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemm...

CrazyStat 5y ago
> Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms allowed for the emperor to remain in power. Conjecture > but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so Also conjecture
- mzvkxlcvd 5y ago
  not really, I saw a documentary about it when I was in Japan.
  - CrazyStat 5y ago
    ... that doesn't make it not conjecture.
js2 5y ago
Re: Truman wanted to drop the bombs. > At the time, the president seemed conflicted over his decision. The day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people believed “that we should continue to strike the Japanese until they are brought groveling to their knees.” Truman responded, “I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the ‘pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation, and, for your information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely necessary.” ... > Looking back, President Truman never shirked personal responsibility for his decision, but neither did he apologize. He asserted that he would not use the bomb in later conflicts, such as Korea. Nevertheless, given the same circumstances and choices that confronted him in Japan in 1945, he said he would do exactly the same thing. https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm

baybal2 5y ago

> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. Relatively speaking, 330000 civilian deaths is surprisingly low in comparison to the war in Europe. USSR lost few percents of the population immediately after the war due to starvation. Civilian losses to enemy troops were horrific enough without any airforce involved. Count went into millions in first years of the war, and the German civilian losses during communist counterattack got as sizeable within months.

thomasmarriott 5y ago

'...Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization...' — Hirohito, August 14,1945

leto_ii 5y ago

> I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. I used to share that same conventional view, but the following comprehensive piece really changed my mind: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiroshima-nagasaki-american-militarism/ https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiroshima-nagasaki-ameri...

bigodbiel 5y ago

This is one of the reasons why I agree with the theory that Japan’s capitulation was only because the Soviets did not renew their non aggression pact.

vanusa 5y ago

I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives. You can believe that if you want of course - but it seems simplistic at best to ignore other factors, such as the planned Soviet entry into the war on August 15. And some believe even that wouldn't have been necessary: Asked in 1945 for his opinion on dropping the atomic bomb, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower replied: “I was against it on two counts. First the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.” Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Roosevelt and Truman, flatly declared that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Even the official US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded unequivocally that “Japan would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

caycep 5y ago
Also, history written by the victors...convenient to convey Curtis Lemay as a war hero vs. a war criminal that signed off on a raid designed to purposefully incinerate civilians. Whose ethnicity were constantly dehumanized as part of the psy-ops of conducting the war...
- dralley 5y ago
  History is not necessarily written by the victors, fwiw. Victors frequently end up too busy running the government to write history books whereas the losers sometimes end up with a lot of free time and motivation. See: Lots of pro-Confederate "history", lots of history from ancient times
  - caycep 5y ago
    "frequently" yes...but with the Pacific theater histories - most of what I've seen and also what's being quoted in the arguments below re "Would Japan have surrendered without the A bomb" are from books by primarily American or British historians, or even the Pentagon's own internal study. This is one conflict where I am not seeing a ton of Japanese academia weighing in. Why, who knows - maybe it isn't a hot topic for current academic research, maybe because of language barriers, engrained biases, etc, (maybe are a lot more Japanese academic works in Japan itself, but not getting a lot of traction here, who knows...) To whit, a lot of the quotes being thrown around to support the "Japan would have never surrendered without the A-bomb" seem(at least on my reading) to suggest there was a lot more debate amongst the civilian and military (Japan AND US Navy) higher ups that were assumed at the time, and who knows what would have happened had more diplomatic measures been tried?

gumby 5y ago

For many many years I didn't understand why the atomic bomb was considered somehow "worse" than mass firebombing like Tokyo or Dresden. In the end a friend gave me a good explanation (ironically a Japanese friend who'd attended high school in the US). He said it seemed "unfair" because only one bomb was dropped, while in a mass attack, seemingly much more effort is expended by the attacker and, more importantly, the target has a "chance to fight back" (forget how ineffective anti aircraft fire was in those days, and still is). After learning that, when this topic came up I would query about where the objections lay and surprisingly, my friend's explanation was quite common -- probably the majority -- even if the person didn't frame it that way. A disturbing quirk of human nature

gumby 5y ago

A lot of criticism of the atomic bombing is context free 20-20 hindsight. Big armies are like huge complex ships: they take a while to get moving, are hard to steer and hard to stop. So one can criticize the destruction of Dresden, but you also have to remember that the UK had built a machine that threw planes into the air and there was little correlation between the amount of armaments being sent and the number of targets available (or accounting to reduced opposition). Yet that machine was a small part of a huge effort, and was probably only paid attention to by the high command when something went wrong. And not to mention the rage and anger on the part of a bunch of people who had been bombed themselves for years. My wife grew up near a town in Germany that was bombed for the first time, and utterly flattened, in late April 1945. Absolutely no strategic value; they had simply wiped out everything above it on the list so now it was their turn. I never heard anyone complain about it (and boy old people were happy to give you an earful about all sorts of things). For more lack of retrospective context: As for the atomic bomb, don't forget Turman only heard about it when he became president. And all sorts of facts that seem clear today were completely unclear back then. What would the soviets actually do? Was Okinawa an example of what the invasion would be like? Japan still occupied Manchuria and other parts of Asia. Intelligence on the risks the Allies faced was still thin. And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
> Absolutely no strategic value Was there industry in or near the town that supported the German war effort? Were there German military units stationed in or near the town? I'm not saying it's right but the term "strategic value" had a very different definition in WWII. Any and all war effort or suspected war effort had "strategic value". > And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre. I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread occurrence?
- thetallstick 5y ago
  >> And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre. > I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread occurrence? I also never heard of widespread armed rebellion but definitely there was a lot of animosity over who got to go home, who got to stay, and who had to go to the Pacific. I would not have wanted that job. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/points-system-us-armys-demobilization https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/points-system...

bonsoir 5y ago

Copium

jacquesm 5y ago

Let me be blunt: what you believe isn't relevant. It happened the way it did and what the other leg of that choice contains is something that nobody knows and therefore debating it is pointless. What we do know is that a great crime was committed, the balance of which is also irrelevant, because whether one, ten, ten thousand or 100,000 or even millions of Japanese lives would been saved we do not know. But we do know how many were lost.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pmoriarty 5y ago

"...two days before President Roosevelt left for the Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in early February 1945, he was shown a forty-page memorandum drafted by General MacArthur outlining a Japanese offer for surrender almost identical with the terms subsequently concluded by his successor, President Truman. The single difference was the Japanese insistence on retention of the emperor, which was not acceptable to the American strategists at the time, though it was ultimately allowed in the final peace terms... "Specifically, the terms of the Japanese peace offers of late January 1945 were as follows: Full surrender of the Japanese forces, air, land and sea, at home and in all occupied countries. Surrender of all arms and ammunition. Agreement of the Japanese to occupation of their homeland and island possessions. Relinquishment of Manchuria, Korea and Formosa. Regulation of Japanese industry. Surrender of designated war criminals for trial. Release of all prisoners. "Other than retention of the emperor these terms were identical to the final surrender terms." https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/129964 https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/129964

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Don't forget that the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were early ones with very limited yields. Imagining a modern bombardment that's worse than a modern nuke is very difficult, especially when you take fallout, radiation poisoning and pollution into account.

lm28469 5y ago

> the atomic bombs are not worse than other. ??? besides horrible deaths by radiation poisoning, increased cancer risk and genetic defects ? This is like dying by firing squad vs being eaten alive by dogs, sure you still end up dead but one is clearly worse than the other.