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The museum in Hiroshima specifically notes that the claim that America notified people in Hiroshima before dropping the bomb was 100% fiction. Nobody expected t

by pigsty 4y ago

The museum in Hiroshima specifically notes that the claim that America notified people in Hiroshima before dropping the bomb was 100% fiction. Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep. Papers were dropped across the entire country warning Japan to give up. But that’s like Russia warning the entirety of Ukraine that they’re going to destroy them then acting like nuking Kiev is justified because civilians had fair warning. It’s not hard to even find the papers online that were dropped, but there’s a lot of revisionism online that actively defends nuking civilian targets these days. Mentioning the fact the warning claim isn’t accurate gets immediate downvotes and angry comments everywhere online. Even Wikipedia specifically mentions Hiroshima wasn’t listed, and the papers are publicly available and mention only cities that aren’t Hiroshima, so I’m not sure why people get outraged.

defrost 4y ago
> Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep. The bald facts are the USofA had already performed overnight raids on 72 cities in Japan and completely levelled them. The Tokyo firebombing saw tens of thousands of civilian deaths, a similar number to the deaths in Hiroshima. In Japan at the time bombing raids were expected to strike anywhere and everywhere built up urban | industrial areas existed.
- pigsty 4y ago
  So 72 cities got burnt down meaning no place is safe. That doesn’t seem like a fair warning and they could’ve avoided the bombing if they want to—that means civilians are being actively targeted and will be massacred no matter where they are. Japan is a very, very narrow country. “Cities” are basically just a naming convention. Everything from Nagasaki to Tokyo is, frankly, one continuous urban and industrial area. There’s no place that’s more than a brief drive from a dense populated area along that entire corridor.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    >Everything from Nagasaki to Tokyo is, frankly, one continuous urban and industrial area I don't know how true that was in 1940. My understanding is that much of that sprawl developed as they rebuilt all the cities that had been bombed.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    You seem to be overlaying a map of Japan now to a map of Japan then. For example, in 1945, Tokyo's population was 7.4 million, whereas it is now several times that. I can't confirm that it takes up a larger area now than it did then but I'd be willing to bet that it does, by quite a way.
pavlov 4y ago
The US even changed its targets just weeks before the bombing. Originally the second bomb was meant for Kyoto instead of Nagasaki: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182 This enormous cultural destruction was averted because the US Secretary of War had taken his honeymoon in Kyoto decades earlier. Presumably he had no such emotional connection to the innocents killed in Nagasaki.
- tough 4y ago
  Tourism will save you from total anhiliation from the masters.
  - largepeepee 4y ago
    Saved from total annihilation? They more than proved their point with the first nuke, the second nuke was more "fun" field testing. Esp since civilians were the main casualties and they could afford to shop around for locations.
    - tough 4y ago
      It was a sarcastic comment tbh, as in it seems pretty wild that the only reason for a city to be spared and the other to be zeroed being the destination of a general of war honeymoon... Like WTF.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      This ignores simple facts. The Japanese had sufficient time to surrender after the first nuke was dropped. The second was apparently what was required for them to capitulate. The loss of life (on both sides) from an invasion would have been at least an order of magnitude greater. One terrible action to avoid a prolonged much larger loss of life. I don't envy the people who had to make that difficult decision but it is clear they made the correct one.
      - kjkjadksj 4y ago
        If the point was to bluff and insist that we had a thousand nukes ready to go, we should have just dropped one in the remote countryside where the crater can be appreciated but loss of life minimized. There was no strategic merit at this point to this loss of life, nor was there any for the firebombing of tokyo or the bombing of dresden or any of the other war crimes commited by the allies against urban populations who had little choice but to sit and die.
nequo 4y ago
Here is source for what you are saying: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaflets/ https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaf... This says that the Nagasaki leaflets may not have made it to Nagasaki until after the bomb was dropped. The leaflets that may have been dropped before the Hiroshima bomb (“LeMay leaflets”) did not reference the atomic bomb. You also have to be aware that the US had been carpet bombing Tokyo for years by this point. People were used to bombs, just not to the atomic bomb. We grew up with the idea of atomic bombs but for people in 1945, seeing the destruction that it caused for the first time in human history must have been truly shocking.
- defrost 4y ago
  The fact that the destruction was caused by a single bomb was shocking to those that appreciated that fact from a distance. The destruction it caused was on par with conventional overnight HE+incendiary raids already carried for months across Japan and previously across Germany prior to German surrender. From photographs and M&M stats alone it would be difficult to seperate destruction in Hiroshima from that in Tokyo.
  - nequo 4y ago
    What do you mean by M&M? Did the overnight raids in Tokyo also kill 80,000 people? I don’t know the numbers for Tokyo but that would sound surprising.
    - ustolemyname 4y ago
      Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1...
      - nequo 4y ago
        Thanks for sharing that.
    - defrost 4y ago
LoveMortuus 4y ago
I also don't like the argument that it was okay because it ended the war...
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  ...though, at the time? After several years of war, across the globe, I can understand a messy end. I can only commend the decision, from afar, as I am pretty sure the Japanese may not have surrendered so soon. And that's an awful lot of atrocities avoided, as well further military and civilian casualties. //off topic: plus plus to the current Japanese government, and their support for Ukraine.
- UncleSlacky 4y ago
  It didn't, it was just another bombing raid among many as far as the Japanese government was concerned. It was the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan that ended the war (Japan had been hoping that the USSR would act as a go-between to negotiate peace until that point).
  - warning26 4y ago
    Possibly, but we can’t discount the fact that the nuclear bomb was specifically called out in the emperor’s surrender address.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan that ended the war It is impossible to disentangle the events. The Soviets declared war on Aug 8, Nagasaki was Aug 9, surrender was proposed by Japan on Aug 10. It was the totality of events that finally caused Japan to surrender. The Japanese Supreme Council was split on surrender even after Nagasaki and USSR invading Manchuria. Here is a quotation from Seal Kido, who was a leader in the peace faction in Japan. On the eve of the atomic attacks, the peace faction’s influence was becoming strong enough to constitute a counterweight against the war faction; and the atomic bombs drastically reduced the sway of the war faction, and the peace faction gained momentum. In addition, the Soviet declaration of war further reduced the dominance of the war faction and gave the peace faction the upper hand. Therefore, I think that the atomic bombs alone could have allowed us to terminate the war. However, the Soviet Union’s entry into the war certainly made it easier [for us]. It is difficult to tell which event contributed more to the termination of the war: the atomic bombs or the Soviet Union’s declaration of war.
rhino369 4y ago
> Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep. Yea they did. The US had already bombed most big cities killing hundreds of thousands. The other cities were actively preparing for the same to happen.

by pigsty 4y ago

defrost 4y ago

> Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep. The bald facts are the USofA had already performed overnight raids on 72 cities in Japan and completely levelled them. The Tokyo firebombing saw tens of thousands of civilian deaths, a similar number to the deaths in Hiroshima. In Japan at the time bombing raids were expected to strike anywhere and everywhere built up urban | industrial areas existed.

pigsty 4y ago
So 72 cities got burnt down meaning no place is safe. That doesn’t seem like a fair warning and they could’ve avoided the bombing if they want to—that means civilians are being actively targeted and will be massacred no matter where they are. Japan is a very, very narrow country. “Cities” are basically just a naming convention. Everything from Nagasaki to Tokyo is, frankly, one continuous urban and industrial area. There’s no place that’s more than a brief drive from a dense populated area along that entire corridor.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  >Everything from Nagasaki to Tokyo is, frankly, one continuous urban and industrial area I don't know how true that was in 1940. My understanding is that much of that sprawl developed as they rebuilt all the cities that had been bombed.
- brigandish 4y ago
  You seem to be overlaying a map of Japan now to a map of Japan then. For example, in 1945, Tokyo's population was 7.4 million, whereas it is now several times that. I can't confirm that it takes up a larger area now than it did then but I'd be willing to bet that it does, by quite a way.

pavlov 4y ago

The US even changed its targets just weeks before the bombing. Originally the second bomb was meant for Kyoto instead of Nagasaki: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182 This enormous cultural destruction was averted because the US Secretary of War had taken his honeymoon in Kyoto decades earlier. Presumably he had no such emotional connection to the innocents killed in Nagasaki.

tough 4y ago
Tourism will save you from total anhiliation from the masters.
- largepeepee 4y ago
  Saved from total annihilation? They more than proved their point with the first nuke, the second nuke was more "fun" field testing. Esp since civilians were the main casualties and they could afford to shop around for locations.
  - tough 4y ago
    It was a sarcastic comment tbh, as in it seems pretty wild that the only reason for a city to be spared and the other to be zeroed being the destination of a general of war honeymoon... Like WTF.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    This ignores simple facts. The Japanese had sufficient time to surrender after the first nuke was dropped. The second was apparently what was required for them to capitulate. The loss of life (on both sides) from an invasion would have been at least an order of magnitude greater. One terrible action to avoid a prolonged much larger loss of life. I don't envy the people who had to make that difficult decision but it is clear they made the correct one.
    - kjkjadksj 4y ago
      If the point was to bluff and insist that we had a thousand nukes ready to go, we should have just dropped one in the remote countryside where the crater can be appreciated but loss of life minimized. There was no strategic merit at this point to this loss of life, nor was there any for the firebombing of tokyo or the bombing of dresden or any of the other war crimes commited by the allies against urban populations who had little choice but to sit and die.

nequo 4y ago

Here is source for what you are saying: https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaflets/ https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaf... This says that the Nagasaki leaflets may not have made it to Nagasaki until after the bomb was dropped. The leaflets that may have been dropped before the Hiroshima bomb (“LeMay leaflets”) did not reference the atomic bomb. You also have to be aware that the US had been carpet bombing Tokyo for years by this point. People were used to bombs, just not to the atomic bomb. We grew up with the idea of atomic bombs but for people in 1945, seeing the destruction that it caused for the first time in human history must have been truly shocking.

defrost 4y ago
The fact that the destruction was caused by a single bomb was shocking to those that appreciated that fact from a distance. The destruction it caused was on par with conventional overnight HE+incendiary raids already carried for months across Japan and previously across Germany prior to German surrender. From photographs and M&M stats alone it would be difficult to seperate destruction in Hiroshima from that in Tokyo.
- nequo 4y ago
  What do you mean by M&M? Did the overnight raids in Tokyo also kill 80,000 people? I don’t know the numbers for Tokyo but that would sound surprising.
  - ustolemyname 4y ago
    Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1...
    - nequo 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing that.
  - defrost 4y ago

LoveMortuus 4y ago

I also don't like the argument that it was okay because it ended the war...

InCityDreams 4y ago
...though, at the time? After several years of war, across the globe, I can understand a messy end. I can only commend the decision, from afar, as I am pretty sure the Japanese may not have surrendered so soon. And that's an awful lot of atrocities avoided, as well further military and civilian casualties. //off topic: plus plus to the current Japanese government, and their support for Ukraine.
UncleSlacky 4y ago
It didn't, it was just another bombing raid among many as far as the Japanese government was concerned. It was the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan that ended the war (Japan had been hoping that the USSR would act as a go-between to negotiate peace until that point).
- warning26 4y ago
  Possibly, but we can’t discount the fact that the nuclear bomb was specifically called out in the emperor’s surrender address.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  the entry of the USSR into the war against Japan that ended the war It is impossible to disentangle the events. The Soviets declared war on Aug 8, Nagasaki was Aug 9, surrender was proposed by Japan on Aug 10. It was the totality of events that finally caused Japan to surrender. The Japanese Supreme Council was split on surrender even after Nagasaki and USSR invading Manchuria. Here is a quotation from Seal Kido, who was a leader in the peace faction in Japan. On the eve of the atomic attacks, the peace faction’s influence was becoming strong enough to constitute a counterweight against the war faction; and the atomic bombs drastically reduced the sway of the war faction, and the peace faction gained momentum. In addition, the Soviet declaration of war further reduced the dominance of the war faction and gave the peace faction the upper hand. Therefore, I think that the atomic bombs alone could have allowed us to terminate the war. However, the Soviet Union’s entry into the war certainly made it easier [for us]. It is difficult to tell which event contributed more to the termination of the war: the atomic bombs or the Soviet Union’s declaration of war.

rhino369 4y ago

> Nobody expected the United States to specifically target tens of thousands of innocent civilians instead of military targets in a single sweep. Yea they did. The US had already bombed most big cities killing hundreds of thousands. The other cities were actively preparing for the same to happen.