Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the reckoning

The Daily Telegraph ^ | August 13, 2012 | Dan Jones

[Cincinatus]

‘There are no civilians in Japan.” This was the judgment of a US Air Force intelligence report produced before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during August 1945. The meaning was clear. The global conflict that had raged since 1939 had become a total war. London, Coventry, Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo and many other cities had all suffered “strategic bombing”. The leading participants in the Second World War did not view civilian population as pure collateral. By 1945 they were the principal targets.

The bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 respectively were the ultimate expressions of total war. Little Boy and Fat Man were exploded over cities that had scant military value and were inhabited by large numbers of ordinary people, whose lives and properties were dramatically and cruelly destroyed. The broad military and political aim was supposedly to shock Japan into agreeing “unconditional surrender”.

But did the means – 180,000 total dead and wounded on the days that the bombs were dropped and tens of thousands more later as a result of radiation poisoning – justify the end of bringing the Second World War to a close? Was it necessary, indeed, to drop the bombs at all?

[woodbutcher1963]

Thank you. My father served in the Philippines and on New Guinea with the Army Air Corp. He came home from Luzon on a hospital ship.

People need to read their history or at least watch the History Channel and the Band Of Brothers Pacific miniseries.

The Japanese would all have died defending their homeland. They would not surrender. It was not the HONORABLE thing to do.

[Myrddin]

Two designs were deployed that day. An implosion weapon and a gun assembled device. The implosion weapon was the design that was uncertain. It required less material, but much higher precision. The gun assembled device required more material, but is a sure fire design. The Little Boy gun assembled was used first on Hiroshima. The Fat Man implosion device was dropped on Nagasaki. It had a higher yield with less material, but the target/deployment did less damage due to terrain effects.

[dfwgator]

The Emperor needed the USA to drop the A-bombs. It gave him the cover he needed to overcome Tojo and the fight-to-the-death faction of general running the Gov’t

This fact cannot be overstated, if the Emperor were to be assassinated, all bets were off.

[stuartcr]

Just expressing my views on things. Thanks

[tet68]

Our only problem is that we haven’t used
an atomic weapon since then.
The world has come to think that we don’t
have the will.

[LifePath]

My Marine uncle Lee was sitting on a dock in San Francisco bay waiting to board a troop ship when they heard about the bomb. He always said Truman saved his life.

I think dropping the bombs was completely justified.

[driftless2]

Since the end of WWII there has been two things: (1) no end to the condemnation of the U.S. by leftists for dropping the a-bombs and (2) practically no notice by the same leftists given to the millions of Asian civilians slaughtered by Japanese forces. I’m sorry the bombs had to be dropped, but THEY HAD TO BE DROPPED!!! Try being an American politician explaining to a young widow or mother after her husband or son was among the 100,000 plus serviceman killed in the invasion of Japan why you didn’t drop the bombs that would have prevented their deaths. I’d favor hanging for any American pol who would have assented to such a scenario.

[buffaloguy]

There were 14 divsions of well supplied Japanese soldiers in Southern Kyushu. It would have been a bloodbath had we invaded.

[China Clipper]

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets Jr., left, and his grandson, then-Capt. Paul Tibbets IV, pilot the last flyable B-29 Superfortress. General Tibbets was the pilot in command of the “Enola Gay” when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. Now a colonel, the younger Tibbets is the Air Force Inspection Agency commander...

I met General Tibbets a few years ago at a Museum-sponsored book signing. He gave a real nice talk, and even signed a copy of his book for me.

His talk made me feel like he was talking to the audience as a story-teller, not a Brigadier General making a report.

He was the real deal.

[stuartcr]

Probably because it hasn’t really been necessary or right to.

[Mrs. Don-o]

It’s by no means settled that the only alternatives were atomic bombing or a lengthy and costly Japanese Home Islands invasion. Let‘s look at who disagreed:

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
(General, U.S. Army; Supreme Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe);

• "..In July 1945... I voiced to him [Secretary of War Stimson] 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'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
  - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
  • "...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
    - Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

  Joined in this opinion by:
  ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
  (Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman);

  HERBERT HOOVER
  (former U.S. President);

  GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
  (General of the Army, U.S. Army)

  JOSEPH GREW
  (Under Sec. of State)

  JOHN McCLOY
  (Assistant Sec. of War)

  RALPH BARD
  (Under Sec. of the Navy)

  LEWIS STRAUSS
  (Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy)

  PAUL NITZE
  (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)

  ELLIS ZACHARIAS
  (Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)

  GENERAL CARL "TOOEY" SPAATZ
  (In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)

  BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
  (The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

  • "...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
    Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

I'm not in a position to evaluate the strictly stragegic question from a military point of view. I don't have the knowledge or the experence. But these men were in such a position, and they did have the knowledge and experience.

This is enough to raise serious doubts.

[TYVets]

This is a garbage editorial, the bombs saved millions of lives, and prevented Stalin from a land grab in Hokkaido and installing a Communist puppet state.

Agreed

A very good book about the different plans for the invasion of the home islands of Japan

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Name-Downfall-Secret-Japan-And-Dropped/dp/0684804069

[SES1066]

Japan was ruthless, had they had the bombs they would have been dropped on New York and Washington, D.C. ...

Japan actually did bomb the mainland US during WW2 and it was, by definition, an unguided terror bombing. By 1943, the Japanese military realized that they had a unique advantage over the US (and Canada) called the prevailing wind. Using a hydrogen balloon made of laminated paper and a well thought out timing and flight plan, Japan could unleash thousands of incendiary and even biological bombs on the western US.

Implemented in 1944, it is estimated that only about 20% of these devices made it to the US and Canada but at least one made it all the way to Michigan. In May of 1945, one of these caused the only mainland US casualties of WW2 when a church camp group in southern Oregon set one off. The US Government had known and kept secret this Japanese campaign because it feared that news would encourage a much larger campaign by the enemy. Since these weapons were near impossible to spot en-route, were easy & inexpensive and potentially very deadly if used for rabid bats or worse, this was a high government secret.

Maybe, even today's liberal media would have kept it a secret, MAYBE!

[TYVets]

Truman’s decision was a humane one, the best possible decision that could be made.

When Harry Truman said the "Buck Stops Here" he meant it.

He made the right decision.

[Riley]

Japan actually did bomb the mainland US during WW2 and it was, by definition, an unguided terror bombing.

There was more than that.

Japanese submarines operated in California and Oregon's coastal waters. A refinery in Southern California was shelled with submarine deck guns, ships were sunk (such as the Emidio, off of Crescent City, CA, and a submarine launched aircraft dropped incendiary bombs in the Oregon forests east of Brookings, OR.

http://www.eugeneleeslover.com/Japanese_bomb_Oregon.html

Long after the war's end, the Japanese pilot was invited back and given the celebrity treatment. He helped dedicate a memorial and made a gift of his sword.

[Little Ray]

I would say “very convenient realism” myself.

Besides, no number of Japanese civilians were worth the life of a single US service member. To hell with them all.

We should have the same attitude where ever we fight, esp. in Afghanistan.

[stuartcr]

Shouldn’t we at least have a declaration of war against a specific country before using nuclear weapons?

[whd23]

The implosion weapon was the design that was uncertain. It required less material, but much higher precision. The gun assembled device required more material, but is a sure fire design.

Correct. Also important is that "Little Boy" used enriched uranium while the "Fat Man" was a plutonium bomb.

[Species8472]

Hiroshima, 2012:

Nagasaki; 2012

Detroit; 2012

Would someone please tell me who won?

[Little Ray]

Be nice. But when was the last time we declared war? In fact when was the last anybody declared war?