Posted on 08/10/2013 6:09:00 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
That was a conclusion of the 1946 U.S. Bombing Survey ordered by President Harry Truman in the wake of World War II.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower said in 1963, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
That wasn’t merely hindsight. Eisenhower made the same argument in 1945. In his memoirs, Ike recalled a visit from War Secretary Henry Stimson:
I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face.”
Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief military advisor, wrote:
It is my opinion 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
I put a lot of weight on the assessments of the military leaders at the time and the contemporaneous commission that studied it. My colleague Michael Barone, who defends the bombing, has other sources — a historian and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — that lead him to conclude Japan would not have surrendered.
This confusion is not surprising. For one thing, there’s what we call the “fog of war” — it’s really hard to know what’s happening currently in war, and it’s even harder to predict which way the war will break.
Second, more generally, there’s the imperfection of human knowledge. Humans are very limited in their ability to predict the future and to determine the consequences of their actions in complex situations like war.
So, if Barone wants to stick with Moynihan’s and the New Republic’s assessments of the war while I stick with the assessments of Gen. Eisenhower, Adm. Leahy, and Truman’s own commission, that’s fine. The question — would Japan have surrendered without our bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki? — can’t be answered with certainty today, nor could it have been answered in August 1945.
But this fog, this imperfect knowledge, ought to diminish the weight given to the consequentialist type of reasoning Barone employs — “Many, many more deaths, of Japanese as well as Americans, would have occurred if the atomic bombs had not been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
We don’t know that. That’s a guess. We didn’t know that at the time. If Pres. Truman believed that, it was a prediction of the future — and a prediction that clashed with the predictions of the military leaders.
Given all this uncertainty, I would lend more weight to principle. One principle nearly everyone shares is this: it’s wrong to deliberately kill babies and innocent children. The same goes for Japanese women, elderly, disabled, and any other non-combatants. Even if you don’t hold this as an absolute principle, most people hold it as a pretty firm rule.
To justify the bombing, you need to scuttle this principle in exchange for consequentialist thinking. With a principle as strong as “don’t murder kids” I think you’d need a lot more certainty than Truman could have had.
I don’t think Truman’s decision was motivated by evil. I’ll even add that it was an understandable decision. But I think it was the wrong one.
RE: So, you wanted the war to continue for another year, six months.
The first paragraph of Carney’s article reads:
“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.”
( I don’t know WHEN they would have surrendered though. The article does not qualify the timetable. He is seems to imply that the surrender would have been immediate... but I don;t read that at all ).
I know you didn't. Being a civil war buff, though, I just couldn't resist. The early morning battle plan story of the second day was, I believe, just invented as an attempt to place blame on Longstreet, mostly by Early, in order to cover his own failings.
Back in 1966, while I was stationed at Walker AFB, at the Roswell Public Library I picked up a book on the life of Truman.
I noticed that on the last page, someone had written in large letters TRUMAN-MURDERER!
Underneath was a long note penned by someone else about how the person who wrote the above note did not know what he was talking about as the BOMB saved so many American GI’s lives.
I would buy this pant load if the Japanese would have attempted to end the war before the second bomb.
He documented the numerous suicidal coup attempts and sometimes even successes of the very radical, Bushido-inspired firebrands within the Imperial Japanese military.
Regardless of the caution of the more senior admirals and generals, these firebrands often forced the entire Japanese nation to take a harder and more aggressive stand.
It was the same group who tried to steal the Emperor's recording of surrender, take over the radio stations to ensure it wasn't played and keep Japan from surrendering.
Every historian should consider Toland’s view that these radicals drove the march to war with the United States and had considerable power and ability to change the normal course of things.
In other words, they were very lose cannons whose actions often started a whole new and different approach by the Japanese. One almost impossible to predict except more war, more ignoring the reality of the war and no surrender.
Oil and trade.
What was the name of that ship?
Oil. No really, basically oil and rubber. The Japanese planned to invade Southeast Asia for natural resources and we were the only thing keeping them from doing it. They decided instead of doing their thing and then fighting us when we decided to stop them, they would just wipe out our Navy and we would not be able to stop them.
I get so tired of this BS about the atomic BOMBS, plural, as in two, every August by these hand-wring, dip$hit, chairwarmer, REMFs.
A computer crash wiped out my analysis of the Battle of Okinawa which I used to post in response to the know-nothing musings of these people.
In short, there were so many artillery shells used in that battle that there was not one thing on the island, man-made or natural that was over 24 inches in height. In addition to the people of Okinawa throwing themselves off the suicide cliffs, mothers cut the throats of their own children to silence their crying so their hiding places would not be given away.
In the Japanese Underground Naval Headquarters, there was one room where Japanese officers went in and pulled the pins from grenades to commit suicide in turns. The pock marks on the wall attested to how high the bodies were stacked in the room when it was over.
Additionally, the United States did not need to strike any Purple Heart medals for almost 50 years after the war, as they had made that many in anticipation of invading the Japanese homeland.
The US was opposing Japan's imperialist aggression against China and we embargoed the sale of gasoline, oil, and steel to Japan. They relied on those resources for their imperialist expansion plans, and were hurting without them. They planned on taking the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies to replace the American oil, but the U.S.-held Philippines and the American Pacific fleet in Hawaii stood in the way.
So, in a way, it was a war for oil.
‘the article seems to make the clear argument that the atomic bomb was inexcusable.’
Ask the survivors of the USS Arizona whether it was necessary to drop the bomb.
It is called, ‘Unconditional’, for a reason. If we had allowed the Japanese a modicum of respect and dignity at the end of WWII, we would have been back in another shooting war by 1955.
If one is truly conflicted by the use of the bomb to end WWII, I suggest that they move to Paris or Bolivia even.
The ignorant democrat @sshole who wrote this article clearly was neither at the attack on Pearl Harbor, nor was he in the Bataan Death March.
These damn democrats are the most intellectually dishonest creeps this country has to offer.
Who cares? The japs started the war. The japs lost.
It’s a simple map.
http://www.pwc.com/id/en/publications/indonesiaoilgasconcessionandinfrastructuremap.jhtml
Oil and Gas in indonesia. What’s in between Indonesia and Japan? The Philippines. In 1945 - who controlled the Philippines?
For sure that guy had it coming; the problem is the other 999,999 people in his town and what if anything they’d done to have it coming... Japan was defeated after the first two or three big firebomb raids and there was nothing resembling proportion in the picture. Some 3000 Americans had been killed at Pearl Harbor, while we may in fact have killed a million people in the fire raid over Tokyo March 9/10 of 45. It might have been possible to end the war months earlier, and without getting Russia involved on the Pacific rim or leaving Stalinist regimes on the Pacific rim.
Leahy was a Navy Officer. The defense budget was going to be reduced after WWII. Of course he was going to credit the naval blockade and not the atomic weapons. He was trying to protect the Navy’s budget.
As there will always be the blame America first crowd, aka the enemy within, this vomit is guaranteed to be regurgitated up every year.
If we look at the two countries which the communist liberals did not prevent us from bombing the crap out of, German and Japan, they became allies.
Now fast forward to the era of the anti-American enemy within and fighting limited wars, only fighting up to a certain line, limiting how far you bomb and we never solved an issue since.
IE: N/S Korea, and Jane Fonda how many civilians were killed after you and the rest of your enemy within got the country to turn tail and run from Vietnam (after a long, hand tied behind our back war), and the enemy within who caused us to leave Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf war...
Fight the damned war with all you’ve got. Beat the crap out of the enemy until their vile leaders surrender and they just might end up like Germany and Japan. I do stress might as right now we are fighting an extremely ignorant and sub-human culture.
And I maintain, especially with Muslims, you have not just decimate them (10% for ignorant democrats) you have to annihilate them. Leave any significant number of these sub-human cancer cells alive and the cancer will return.
If the Japanese had the bomb before us, (and they were working on one) do you think that they would not have used it on us?
(see tag)
I have a Japanese couple living next door to me, very nice, mid 40’s, 3 kids, he is a dentist. they were born in Japan, not sure when they came here but their accents are strong. Occasionally they fly the Japanese flag in their back yard, it p*sses me off when I see it. Not as much as it would if they flew it in their front yard.
Whoa, Narragansett, a blast from the past. I remember surfing there, at Matunuck and Pt Judith as well in high school. Fond memories. I think they’re as leftist as Massachusetts now.
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