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Thanks for the pointers...I'm not interested in defending American Jingoism by any means, and am very interested in learning more about the decision to drop the

by wk_end 3y ago

Thanks for the pointers...I'm not interested in defending American Jingoism by any means, and am very interested in learning more about the decision to drop the bomb. That said, I do want to dispute this: > The reason those cities were not targeted by atomic bombs had nothing to do with trying to limit deaths; they were not targeted because they had already been destroyed by firebombing in the months before the atomic bombs were ready, causing more deaths than the atomic bombs caused. It's an exaggeration to say that they were "destroyed". Yes, ~100,000 died in the firebombings of Tokyo...but even by the end of the war the population was still well over 3 million, 10x the size of Hiroshima. Whatever the "true" motivation, the selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was entirely coherent with the claimed strategy that was focused on destroying the Japanese capability to make war, rather than to commit indiscriminate genocide as claimed.

pdonis 3y ago
> It's an exaggeration to say that they were "destroyed". You could say the same about Hiroshima and Nagasaki if you want to be sufficiently particular. But if you look at pictures of Tokyo, for example, after the firebombing raids, and pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs were dropped, they look pretty similar. > even by the end of the war the population was still well over 3 million, 10x the size of Hiroshima And before the war Tokyo's population was about 7 million, perhaps 20x the size of Hiroshima. > the selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was entirely coherent with the claimed strategy that was focused on destroying the Japanese capability to make war, rather than to commit indiscriminate genocide as claimed I agree that "indiscriminate genocide" was not a motivation (and no serious historian that I'm aware of claims that it was). However, "destroying the Japanese capability to make war" is also something of a misstatement regarding the selection of atomic bomb targets. That is another aspect of the rationale given by the US government after the war that has been called into question by more recent historical scholarship. There were high officials in the Truman administration that advocated for using the bombs first on a purely military installation, like a naval base, or for a demonstration on some uninhabited island first (with Japanese observers invited). However, those officials had no real voice in the actual target selection. The main factors in the target selection were that it be a city with some military capability (and none of the cities chosen as potential targets had very much--because, as I have said, by that point in the war there wasn't much warmaking capability anywhere in Japan), such as a factory, but with significant civilian population surrounding it (such as factory workers' homes), and that the targeting point be chosen to maximize the effects of the bomb in order to make them clear to the Japanese. Another factor that needs to be considered when talking about removing Japan's warmaking capability is that, by the end of 1944, the US Navy had Japan completely blockaded; no ships could get in or out. The Japanese Navy was destroyed and Japan had no prospect of getting any additional resources from anywhere (and Japan itself has very few natural resources at all--that's why the Japanese were so insistent upon expanding their control of Asia prior to WW II). That fact alone meant that erosion of the Japanese warmaking capability was only a matter of time. Factories are pointless without raw materials, and guns and tanks and planes are pointless without fuel and ammunition. Indeed, at least one internal US military study found that the blockade all by itself might have caused the Japanese to surrender eventually, without either any atomic bombs or any invasion.

by wk_end 3y ago

pdonis 3y ago

> It's an exaggeration to say that they were "destroyed". You could say the same about Hiroshima and Nagasaki if you want to be sufficiently particular. But if you look at pictures of Tokyo, for example, after the firebombing raids, and pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombs were dropped, they look pretty similar. > even by the end of the war the population was still well over 3 million, 10x the size of Hiroshima And before the war Tokyo's population was about 7 million, perhaps 20x the size of Hiroshima. > the selection of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was entirely coherent with the claimed strategy that was focused on destroying the Japanese capability to make war, rather than to commit indiscriminate genocide as claimed I agree that "indiscriminate genocide" was not a motivation (and no serious historian that I'm aware of claims that it was). However, "destroying the Japanese capability to make war" is also something of a misstatement regarding the selection of atomic bomb targets. That is another aspect of the rationale given by the US government after the war that has been called into question by more recent historical scholarship. There were high officials in the Truman administration that advocated for using the bombs first on a purely military installation, like a naval base, or for a demonstration on some uninhabited island first (with Japanese observers invited). However, those officials had no real voice in the actual target selection. The main factors in the target selection were that it be a city with some military capability (and none of the cities chosen as potential targets had very much--because, as I have said, by that point in the war there wasn't much warmaking capability anywhere in Japan), such as a factory, but with significant civilian population surrounding it (such as factory workers' homes), and that the targeting point be chosen to maximize the effects of the bomb in order to make them clear to the Japanese. Another factor that needs to be considered when talking about removing Japan's warmaking capability is that, by the end of 1944, the US Navy had Japan completely blockaded; no ships could get in or out. The Japanese Navy was destroyed and Japan had no prospect of getting any additional resources from anywhere (and Japan itself has very few natural resources at all--that's why the Japanese were so insistent upon expanding their control of Asia prior to WW II). That fact alone meant that erosion of the Japanese warmaking capability was only a matter of time. Factories are pointless without raw materials, and guns and tanks and planes are pointless without fuel and ammunition. Indeed, at least one internal US military study found that the blockade all by itself might have caused the Japanese to surrender eventually, without either any atomic bombs or any invasion.