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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#91

Post by valuearb »

rbecker wrote: post #81
valuearb wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Japanese offered to surrender if they could continue to control their captured territories, essentially continuing to rape China. That’s a hell of a condition to allow them.

I'm curious where you found this information, because the best I could find was that negotiations regarding those conditions were never finished: To this end, Stalin and Molotov strung out the negotiations with the Japanese, giving them false hope of a Soviet-mediated peace. [..] The Japanese would have to surrender unconditionally to all the Allies. To prolong the war, the Soviets opposed any attempt to weaken this…

That is a reference to what the Russians wanted, and this is after the nuclear bombs. Once the bombs were dropped terms acceptable to some of the Japanese changed. Japan wasn’t a monolithic government, you had competing leadership, the empowered, the military, the politicians, etc.

The military fervently wanted a US invasion, believing it could inflict millions of casualties and then negotiate better terms. And many Japanese didn’t feel like they had even lost yet, they were willing to endure bombings feeling their fortress island was unassailable.

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/world-war-ii-th...

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#92

Post by kingkawn »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #42
kingkawn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quote from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Japan at the moment was seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” There are more quotes, but basically everything you were taught about the necessity of wiping out hundreds of thousands of people in a flash was after the fact American propaganda to justify a war crime.

> " Japan at the moment was seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of face " Not really; some in Japan were seeking a surrender and some, notably nearly all of the Japanese military, were quite definitively not. Had the internal coup intended to prevent the surrender succeeded ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident ), Eisenhower's quote would have been entirely false instead of a half-truth.

You know more than Eisenhower?

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#93

Post by Someone »

walleeee wrote: post #37
senand wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even assuming it did bring an end to the war: was it really necessary to drop two bombs for that?

Similarly, can someone explain why the bombs weren't dropped a few miles out to sea? It would still have clearly demonstrated the capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...:

“…many U.S. officials and scientists argued that a demonstration would sacrifice the shock value of the atomic attack, and the Japanese could deny the atomic bomb was lethal, making the mission less likely to produce surrender. Allied prisoners of war might be moved to the demonstration site and be killed by the bomb. They also worried that the bomb might be a dud since the Trinity test was of a stationary device, not an air-dropped bomb. In addition, although more bombs were in production, only two would be available at the start of August, and they cost billions of dollars, so using one for a demonstration would be expensive.”

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#94

Post by spicyramen »

I have had the opportunity to visit Hiroshima and lived in the US where I had the chance to study under professor William Perry former Secretary of Defense and responsible for many post war research. The perspective and official version that Americans have is that dropping the bomb was the right thing to do and only way to finish the war in the Pacific. The history is written by the winners simple fact to always keep in mind. This is clearly a misunderstanding of World War 2. In Europe after England and France lost their hegemony as empires, it became a race between USSR and US for world domination. The Red Army after controlling Germany were on their way to Japan, and Japanese were really afraid of it. There was a previous dispute over Kamchatka peninsula and other territories that Russians would want to claim back. US already defeated Japan in the Pacific and most of Japan was already destroyed. US sent the bomb to send a message to the World and USSR: we have this weapon and we will use it. It was in their best interest to control a Russia-free Japan than get into the same mess as in Germany.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#95

Post by ekianjo »

supernova87a wrote: post #3

When I was young in grade school, and learned about the bomb, and its terrifying aftermath, pictures, scars, I thought that this was clearly a wrong against humanity to have been dropped on anyone. Clearly the visceral kind of "this should never happen" reaction that any average person would have. "How could we put the Enola Gay on a stamp to glorify this?" Then, in college and especially after, learning about the eq…

> I realized that it actually did bring an end to the war.

Then you have been fed propaganda. The bomb had nothing to do with Japan surrendering.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#96

Post by Gibbon1 »

dboreham wrote: post #84
manfredo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, it took not one, but two atomic bombs dropped on cities for Japan to surrender. And even after that, there was an attempted coup to continue fighting the war: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident There only existed two bombs at the time. Had the bombs been dropped as a show of force, it is very likely the US and Japan would have to suffer through a costly invasion anyway.

Hmm. I think the US had at least one more core for a fat man type weapon.

40 years ago I wrote a paper on nuclear weapons. My memory isn't perfect and the sources are 40-50 years out of date. But here goes.

The US built a massive manufacturing pipeline to make nuclear weapons. Little boy was a once off. Fat man was basically a functional prototype. And the manufacturing pipeline was running and kept running after the war. How much weapons grade plutonium they had left over after they bombed Nagasaki is kind of a quibble.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#98

Post by traceroute66 »

Nuking the Japanese was just the culmination of rather horrific methods used by the US against Japan.

Another one the US was quite keen on is firebombing (aerial incendiary bombing of urban areas). Grave of the Fireflies is a movie well worth watching that provides a depiction of the effect of war on society.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#99

Post by lordgeek »

Notice the similarity with today Russia:

- Run by an eternal Emperor adored by population at large (not counting few remaining intellectuals he murders every year)

- Extremely religious-jingoistic national ideology as “strong spiritual braces of Russians”. Quite similar to militaristic Japan “warrior spirit of master race”.

- Already invaded and conquered few smaller neighbors in the wars of conquest

- On of top sources of toxic influence in every field in the modern world

Countries who blindingly follow some two bit God-Emperor aggressive trash should not be surprised to eat Gamma rays for breakfast one fine morning.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#100

Post by edflsafoiewq »

purple-again wrote: post #21
Entwickler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the idea that atomic bombs were the deciding factor in ending the war is in large part American propaganda. The fact is the Soviets had far superior divisions (in both manpower and fire power) lined up against the Japanese in Manchuria, and shattered them within weeks. From wikipedia( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War ), "Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the…

In the surrendering words of the emperor himself the atomic bomb is directly mentioned as one reason for the surrender.

He also says: "Indeed, we declared war on America and Britain out of our sincere desire to ensure Japan's self-preservation and the stabilization of East Asia, it being far from our thought either to infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement."

The Jewel Voice Broadcast should not be read uncritically.

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