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>It gets into messy areas where it's hard to convince people that the damage was lesser than it otherwise would have been in the future. Morbidly adjacent, the

>It gets into messy areas where it's hard to convince people that the damage was lesser than it otherwise would have been in the future. Morbidly adjacent, the US is still getting dragged over the coals for using nukes on Japan rather than a ground invasion.

seunosewa 8d ago
There is no excuse for the second bomb.
- daedrdev 8d ago
  Yes there was. They didn’t surrender, and the US intended to make it look like they had an enormous number of bombs even though the next was going to be weeks away
  - rtkwe 8d ago
    If the need was /just/ to demonstrate the existence of a second bomb implying a continuous pipeline/supply, that didn't have to happen in a city.
  - asdff 8d ago
    Even with the first bomb I wonder if they could have handled it a bit differently. Maybe scuttle a ship with it in the middle of the Tokyo bay, then drop a dud bomb directly onto the imperial palace with a warning painted on it. Seems like immediately after the bombings in hiroshima and nagasaki there was still quite a fog of war going on initially about what even happened. Making the sun appear in the middle of the tokyo bay would have been indisputable however. You'd get the blinding flash, the shockwave, the awe of the cloud, and everyone including everyone in government would not only witness it (anywhere with a window would have gotten the at least the flash), but survive, and do something about having witnessed it. Of course 1940s thinking of the world was a bit less restrained when it came to the question of wasting a quarter million people in an instant. One wonders if the US felt the bombs were necessary to use with the war already won by that point to have sort of established precedent to use them in future conflicts. The quickness between targets would say as much as well: this is just another bombing run no different than an incendiary run a few days apart from another. After all, that's exactly what MacArthur intended to do in Korea. They were probably desperate to ensure their miracle weapon, one that took so much investment and effort and had so many careers staked in its success, would not end up like chemical weapons where it was verbotten to use even by the nazis.
    - daedrdev 8d ago
      I think you’ve made reasonable points. I think of it like this: the US was already firebombing Tokyo which was actually much worse than the nukes, they did likely see it as a continuation of the existing firebombing campaign
      - rtkwe 8d ago
        Yeah I don't think that comes up too much in the defense because it requires admitting the the US was already doing some pretty horrendous things to civilians outside the atomic bombs which is a rough datum to raise when you're defending dropping the atomic bombs. "Well it's good we dropped them because among the alternatives was a continued firebombing campaign." Kind of feeds into the argument that the very least the US weren't the the unambiguous Good Guys just the Better Guys in a lot of ways. (And lets be clear it's not exactly hard to be better than Imperial Japan....)
rtkwe 8d ago
The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor which the US ended up not messing with significantly anyways (at least in terms of execution for various war crimes committed by Imperial Japanese forces). That's usually the main argument I see and honestly I see the points there, Japan really was putting out fairly significant feelers about a possible negotiated end to the war before the Soviet Union was able to pivot to the Far East theater. We'll never /really/ know what the outcome of a negotiated peace would have looked like since it was obviated so soon after it started by the bombing and Japan's unconditional surrender afterwards. We don't really know how much that path would differ from the outcome of the unconditional surrender turned out to be. The main point is it's not an either or situation between bomb and the bloody full on land invasion scenarios as presented by the bomb apologist [0] camp. [0] I mean this in the neutral dictionary sense of simply "one that defends a controversial position", just to clarify.
- WarmWash 8d ago
  I think this single image from 1945 captures everything about the situation with Japan at the time, and what went into the decision making.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps#/media/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps#/medi...
  - rtkwe 8d ago
    I think very few people on the anti-bomb side would seriously argue there wasn't a split in the Imperial government and a lot of preparation going into defending against a potential US invasion attempt. At the same time however there were the beginning of diplomatic efforts to explore a negotiated peace from minority factions in the Japanese government partially backed by the Emperor, these (to me) undermine the "it was the only option" argument supporting the bombings morally. I found this article that talks a bit about the feelers (even though it gets side tracked about a supposed early-1945 prototypical peace "offer" that closely matched the eventual status post war, though that's an interesting read and an important bit of info about how to treat and examine reports of things like that). [0] The main thrust of the anti-moral-bombing argument is essentially that the MAGIC intercepts we know happened for sure of their early diplomatic feelers indicate that the Emperor and some minority factions were beginning to develop the terms for a possible surrender and that combined with the main reasons for the US bombing not being directly oriented towards defeating Japan but were already looking to their next adversary, the USSR, weakens the argument that the bombing was ultimately more moral way of ending the war. We know for sure from Truman et al's own writings at the time show that their only concern wasn't the least bloody end of the war with Japan and they wanted to demonstrate the bomb to the USSR, I think that's pretty undisputed history even by the pro-moral-bombing side of the argument. I tend to agree that it's unlikely Japan would have been able to stand up to a US blockade when we were already able to safely park battleships off their coast before the bombs were dropped and ultimately the Supreme War Council would have been overruled by the Emperor the same way they were after the atomic bombs were dropped. How quickly would the pro-negotiation side have gained power with a blockade of the home islands? That would have been a pretty safe operation for the US at the time. The biggest question marks in the whole thing are largely impossible to answer how many more defeats would the militarist side have to suffer before accepting a surrender that looks like the eventual post war status. The insistence on unconditional surrender is also a thing that's difficult to weigh morally. If the US insists on a condition it knows is unacceptable how much does that shift the moral blame for Japan not accepting the ultimatum of an "unacceptable" condition or bomb? Sorry if it's a bit jumbled, I'm bouncing between work and this and I'm not a great essayist to begin with. Too long; You rambled too much there in the middle: the main argument of the antibomb remains that it's unlikely that a full or even partial invasion of the home islands would have been ultimately required and the atomic bombing of civilians is so morally bad that it requires an iron clad "there was no other option to end the war" (or the only alternatives were far bloodier; eg a full home island invasion) which the Japanese feelers about negotiating a peace undermines. I think ultimately if we could part the curtains of time for both sides and show the post war outcome to both sides Japan would have accepted a surrender that lead to that future. [0] https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-offer-to-surrender-before-hiroshima-part-2/#:~:text=In%20the%20end,the%20atomic%20bombs. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-...
polemicfire 8d ago
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seunosewa 8d ago

There is no excuse for the second bomb.

daedrdev 8d ago
Yes there was. They didn’t surrender, and the US intended to make it look like they had an enormous number of bombs even though the next was going to be weeks away
- rtkwe 8d ago
  If the need was /just/ to demonstrate the existence of a second bomb implying a continuous pipeline/supply, that didn't have to happen in a city.
- asdff 8d ago
  Even with the first bomb I wonder if they could have handled it a bit differently. Maybe scuttle a ship with it in the middle of the Tokyo bay, then drop a dud bomb directly onto the imperial palace with a warning painted on it. Seems like immediately after the bombings in hiroshima and nagasaki there was still quite a fog of war going on initially about what even happened. Making the sun appear in the middle of the tokyo bay would have been indisputable however. You'd get the blinding flash, the shockwave, the awe of the cloud, and everyone including everyone in government would not only witness it (anywhere with a window would have gotten the at least the flash), but survive, and do something about having witnessed it. Of course 1940s thinking of the world was a bit less restrained when it came to the question of wasting a quarter million people in an instant. One wonders if the US felt the bombs were necessary to use with the war already won by that point to have sort of established precedent to use them in future conflicts. The quickness between targets would say as much as well: this is just another bombing run no different than an incendiary run a few days apart from another. After all, that's exactly what MacArthur intended to do in Korea. They were probably desperate to ensure their miracle weapon, one that took so much investment and effort and had so many careers staked in its success, would not end up like chemical weapons where it was verbotten to use even by the nazis.
  - daedrdev 8d ago
    I think you’ve made reasonable points. I think of it like this: the US was already firebombing Tokyo which was actually much worse than the nukes, they did likely see it as a continuation of the existing firebombing campaign
    - rtkwe 8d ago
      Yeah I don't think that comes up too much in the defense because it requires admitting the the US was already doing some pretty horrendous things to civilians outside the atomic bombs which is a rough datum to raise when you're defending dropping the atomic bombs. "Well it's good we dropped them because among the alternatives was a continued firebombing campaign." Kind of feeds into the argument that the very least the US weren't the the unambiguous Good Guys just the Better Guys in a lot of ways. (And lets be clear it's not exactly hard to be better than Imperial Japan....)

rtkwe 8d ago

The main reason is there are alternative paths where neither were required. Japan was already fishing around for diplomatic end to the war with the major sticking point being conditional vs unconditional surrender and their main condition iirc was protection for the Emperor which the US ended up not messing with significantly anyways (at least in terms of execution for various war crimes committed by Imperial Japanese forces). That's usually the main argument I see and honestly I see the points there, Japan really was putting out fairly significant feelers about a possible negotiated end to the war before the Soviet Union was able to pivot to the Far East theater. We'll never /really/ know what the outcome of a negotiated peace would have looked like since it was obviated so soon after it started by the bombing and Japan's unconditional surrender afterwards. We don't really know how much that path would differ from the outcome of the unconditional surrender turned out to be. The main point is it's not an either or situation between bomb and the bloody full on land invasion scenarios as presented by the bomb apologist [0] camp. [0] I mean this in the neutral dictionary sense of simply "one that defends a controversial position", just to clarify.

WarmWash 8d ago
I think this single image from 1945 captures everything about the situation with Japan at the time, and what went into the decision making.[1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps#/media/File:Kokumin_Giyutai.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps#/medi...
- rtkwe 8d ago
  I think very few people on the anti-bomb side would seriously argue there wasn't a split in the Imperial government and a lot of preparation going into defending against a potential US invasion attempt. At the same time however there were the beginning of diplomatic efforts to explore a negotiated peace from minority factions in the Japanese government partially backed by the Emperor, these (to me) undermine the "it was the only option" argument supporting the bombings morally. I found this article that talks a bit about the feelers (even though it gets side tracked about a supposed early-1945 prototypical peace "offer" that closely matched the eventual status post war, though that's an interesting read and an important bit of info about how to treat and examine reports of things like that). [0] The main thrust of the anti-moral-bombing argument is essentially that the MAGIC intercepts we know happened for sure of their early diplomatic feelers indicate that the Emperor and some minority factions were beginning to develop the terms for a possible surrender and that combined with the main reasons for the US bombing not being directly oriented towards defeating Japan but were already looking to their next adversary, the USSR, weakens the argument that the bombing was ultimately more moral way of ending the war. We know for sure from Truman et al's own writings at the time show that their only concern wasn't the least bloody end of the war with Japan and they wanted to demonstrate the bomb to the USSR, I think that's pretty undisputed history even by the pro-moral-bombing side of the argument. I tend to agree that it's unlikely Japan would have been able to stand up to a US blockade when we were already able to safely park battleships off their coast before the bombs were dropped and ultimately the Supreme War Council would have been overruled by the Emperor the same way they were after the atomic bombs were dropped. How quickly would the pro-negotiation side have gained power with a blockade of the home islands? That would have been a pretty safe operation for the US at the time. The biggest question marks in the whole thing are largely impossible to answer how many more defeats would the militarist side have to suffer before accepting a surrender that looks like the eventual post war status. The insistence on unconditional surrender is also a thing that's difficult to weigh morally. If the US insists on a condition it knows is unacceptable how much does that shift the moral blame for Japan not accepting the ultimatum of an "unacceptable" condition or bomb? Sorry if it's a bit jumbled, I'm bouncing between work and this and I'm not a great essayist to begin with. Too long; You rambled too much there in the middle: the main argument of the antibomb remains that it's unlikely that a full or even partial invasion of the home islands would have been ultimately required and the atomic bombing of civilians is so morally bad that it requires an iron clad "there was no other option to end the war" (or the only alternatives were far bloodier; eg a full home island invasion) which the Japanese feelers about negotiating a peace undermines. I think ultimately if we could part the curtains of time for both sides and show the post war outcome to both sides Japan would have accepted a surrender that lead to that future. [0] https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-offer-to-surrender-before-hiroshima-part-2/#:~:text=In%20the%20end,the%20atomic%20bombs. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-...

polemicfire 8d ago

[dead]