Hiroshima: The Decision to Drop the Bomb

The History Channel ^ | May 6, 2004 | The History Channel

[walford]

"An investigation, based on newly released documents, into President Truman's controversial decision to drop the A-bomb. Concludes that the real reason the U.S. dropped the bomb was to intimidate the Soviet Union."

Several 'experts' explained that dropping the A-bombs on Japan were unnecessary [there were no dissenting points of view aired]. The announcer -- bearing an English accent -- explained that the reasons that Truman decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki were:

1. A raving desire for revenge on the part of the American people. 2. To use the opportunity to 'experiment' the new weapon on an expendable population. 3. To demonstrate to the USSR that America is not to be messed with. 4. The bombs were unnecessary, because the Japanese were about to surrender anyway.

[shhrubbery!]

yeah, that's why they ran up the white flag after the first one was dropped

IIRC, the Japanese were stunned out of the minds, but did make some noises about surrender after the first bomb.

I believe there's evidence that Japanese communications re surrender were mistranslated.

Don't get me wrong, I think Truman made the right decision with the first bomb. It's the second I'm not so sure about. But, when the commander-in-chief gets faulty intelligence, can we really blame him?

[southland]

The japanese were still shooting at us after Hiroshima so the second bomb was necessary .. We had no more bombs under construction at that time.

[A Jovial Cad]

*Yeah my Dad was on his way to some sort of staging area when the little darlings surrendered*

So was my grandfather, only it was P-38's.

*The survival rate among TBF flyers and crew was not too high*

My grandfather swore, till the day he died, that had it not been for Hiroshima & Nagasaki his whole squadron would've been wiped out down to the last man, himself included. He also estimated that they would've probably killed, in strafing runs & fragmentation bombing runs, *at least* 1,000 Japanese defenders for every *one* of them whom went down due to flak, A.A. fire, etc.
The Atom bombs *saved* lives in light of that terrible arithmetic, IMHO. My grandfather was speaking from the perspective of the Army Air Corps.--just imagine what would've happened after the Army Divisions and Marine Units had splashed ashore in an invasion of the Japanese Mainland!

[GATOR NAVY]

I read an article that stated there was a plan to use Abombs to blow breeches in the Japanese defenses so that our troops could break out of the beachheads.

Which also brings up the fact that nearly everyone at that time simply thought of the bomb as a bigger explosive. The effects of radiation were not well understood.

[Dems_R_Losers]

I'm another Atomic Bomb baby. My dad was in Tacoma, Washington waiting to ship out for the invasion. His unit was told to expect 80 to 90% casualties. My dad was a medic and was told not to expect to come home, because the Japs targeted the red crosses on the medics' helmets and equipment. Truman knew all these numbers and was sickened by them. He knew damn well he was saving lives by dropping those bombs.

This whole Soviet thing has been raised many times over the years and debunked just as many times.

[A Jovial Cad]

Exactly right, plain and simple.
EOM

[walford]

The History Channel just quashed my thread, so I appended my comments here. They know very well that their portrayal of HST and the American people's motivation is slander.
http://boards.historychannel.com/threaded.jsp?forum=101&thread=300011719&start=29&msgSeq=29

[mtntop3]

Massive loss of life.

[GATOR NAVY]

Are you sure about Yokohama? Yokohama was firebombed in May, here's an interesting link

Air Raid against Cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama

[Doctor Stochastic]

After the fact, it wasn't obvious that the Soviets would destroy the Japanese army in Manchuria so decisively. Given Truman's knowledge at the time, dropping the bombs was the correct thing to do; end the war quickly.

The Japanese didn't believe that the Hiroshima bomb was nuclear at first. Communications with Hiroshima were destroyed and the actual destruction wasn't as much as some of the other raids. The Americans communicated (somehow, probably not by pidgeon) that the Japanese should examine the sulfur in the phone line insulation. It would contain a quantity of a rare isotope of chlorine the could only be produced by a neutron flux.

[walford]

I can tolerate questioning Truman's decision. 20/20 hindsight and all that, fair enough.

This History channel POS was not only questioning his motives, it was purporting sinister/inhumane motives as historical fact -- of him and the American people [who, according the the HC had revenge as the basis of THEIR support, not saving lives].

I posted this thread, because it is important that such propaganda is exposed for what it is.

[mtntop3]

I've noticed these blatant distortions on the History Channel for several years now. And the productions are perhaps being passed on as "instructional videos" for school settings.

[SandRat]

When my son was in high school the world history class was debating the "morality and motivation" for dropping the bombs. Having read all of my military history books he proceeded to quote the same information that you did and more on both Olympic and Coronet. He then asked those thought the bombing was wrong to raise their hands; about 2/3s did out of a class of 30. He then asked that those whose grandparents were not in WWII to put their hands down and only one or two did. He then zinged them by stating that maybe the bombs should not have been dropped because then their grandfathers would never have met and married their grandmothers and he would not have had to put up with historical illiterates.

BTW, he got an A for the course. The teacher cited his skill for debate points, historical knowledge and class participation to reinforce the A earned from the exams.

[S.O.S121.500]

BOOKbumpIRISH-

[A.A. Cunningham]

Well, on the one hand, a lot of the estimates for casualties from an Invasion are wholly bogus (especially the "1 million American Dead").

That's nothing but speculation on your part. Between the time Truman was sworn in as President and the dropping of the first nuke, the United States suffered over 50 percent of it's Pacific theater casualties for the entire war. Battle plans for the Second Marine Division did not exist for D+5 of the invasion because planners did not believe that the Division would still be functional due to casualties. People who were there know that you're WAG is just that.

[CWOJackson]

Well thank God we only nuked them. Can you imagine how America would be looked at today if we had humiliated them.

[COEXERJ145]

Yes, I'm sure it was included but I often wondered why as I knew it had been firebombed before. I took my information directly from the original Manhattan Project papers "Records of the Manhattan Engineer District" (only enough microfilm to go around the world 10 times).

– “Yokohama - This target is an important urban industrial area which has so far been untouched. Industrial activities include aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries. As the damage to Tokyo has increased additional industries have moved to Yokohama. It has the disadvantage of the most important target areas being separated by a large body of water and of being in the heaviest anti-aircraft concentration in Japan. For us it has the advantage as an alternate target for use in case of bad weather of being rather far removed from the other targets considered. (Classified as an A Target)”

I'm assuming it gets hit by LeMay sometime in between planning and designation as an atomic target.

[GATOR NAVY]

Being that close to Tokyo would make it a good target too. Instant demonstration to the Japanese government.

On a personal note, I didn't have any near family fighting in WWII. They were too old or too young. But if Japan had been invaded or starved into surrender, what would have happened to my wife's family is another story. As it was, an aunt and a cousin of hers died at Nagasaki. They didn't live there, just picked the wrong day to go to the city. I still believe the bombs saved both Japanese and Americans lives.

[VOA]

IIRC, the Japanese were stunned out of the minds, but did make some noises about surrender
after the first bomb.

I was being a bit cavalier with my initial post...it's just that even as a boy
I thought "those Japanese were fanatics...a nuke and given a couple of days and they
still didn't surrender!".

My fuzzy memory does seem to recollect that they did make some halting attempt at
surrender, but like you say, they were probably too stunned to bring off
a coherent and complete negotiation.

Even though the Japanese did have some conception of what a nuclear bomb would do,
it surely was nearly incompreshensible "shock and awe" to be the first recipient of
such a device.

[sushiman]

ping