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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#111

Post by slg »

snickerbockers wrote: post #99
slg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They had to make the maximum concrete, visceral impact with the couple they had such that there would be minimal second-guessing on the part of Japan. And yet they didn't decide to bomb Tokyo or Kyoto. There was clearly a calculus done in selecting the targets to find the right balance of all the various factors involved. I don't see the problem in questioning whether they came to the right decision. Too often the t…

NTA but Tokyo is the worst place you could possibly drop an atom bomb if your goal is to minimize civilian casualties.

Yes, that was the point I was making. The bombs were not dropped on the largest cities which shows the argument that "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was not the only priority. There was some consideration for civilian casualties which opens up the discussion of whether the right balance was struck.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#112

Post by slg »

sneak wrote: post #104
slg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They had to make the maximum concrete, visceral impact with the couple they had such that there would be minimal second-guessing on the part of Japan. And yet they didn't decide to bomb Tokyo or Kyoto. There was clearly a calculus done in selecting the targets to find the right balance of all the various factors involved. I don't see the problem in questioning whether they came to the right decision. Too often the t…

They did decide to bomb Kyoto, for exactly that reason. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, objected to it, due to cultural significance, and convinced Truman to choose an alternate, which was Nagasaki. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182

Yes, I know this and it was part of my point. If "cultural significance" was part of determining bombing sites, then we know "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was clearly not the only goal.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#113

Post by slg »

kbouck wrote: post #108
slg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They had to make the maximum concrete, visceral impact with the couple they had such that there would be minimal second-guessing on the part of Japan. And yet they didn't decide to bomb Tokyo or Kyoto. There was clearly a calculus done in selecting the targets to find the right balance of all the various factors involved. I don't see the problem in questioning whether they came to the right decision. Too often the t…

Tokyo was (fire) bombed a few months earlier causing ~100k deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...

Yes, and millions of people survived those bombings. If the only goal was "maximum concrete, visceral impact", a prior bombing would not have eliminated Tokyo from the list of targets for the nuclear bomb which goes to show that there were other factors in play.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#114

Post by vouaobrasil »

yard2010 wrote: post #106
nelox wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, actually try and put yourself in the shoes of American leadership responsible for making the decision to continue with an invasion of Japan without using nuclear weapons. American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict. The U.S. had limite…

Where goes the line?

I don't know exactly, but at least they could have dropped one bomb instead of two.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#115

Post by makeitdouble »

decimalenough wrote: post #37
makeitdouble wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The war was dictated by a religious leader, to some (most?) there was just no stopping it until it tells them to.

It's not useful to paint Hirohito as a religious leader. Yes, he was technically the head of State Shinto, but he was not the one issuing orders. Depending on how you look at it (and reams of paper have been expended on this topic), he was somewhere between a puppet and a symbol. Certainly not innocent, but also not the instigator.

I'm not arguing about how much blame he should get as a person, I'm stressing out that the country's god was in favor of the war, which puts the population in a completely different mindset than otherwise.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#116

Post by defaultcompany »

cypherpunks01 wrote: post #16

"The work was originally published in The New Yorker , which had planned to run it over four issues but instead dedicated the entire edition of August 31, 1946, to a single article" TO OUR READER: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few…

This article was 160 pages long when printed in the New Yorker. Modern nuclear warheads are around 30x more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. For comparison sake the equivalent resulting story would be 4800 pages long.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#117

Post by Pooge »

I want to give my thoughts to answer a few comments in this thread. If the atomic bomb was first developed by the Japanese, they wouldn't have hesitated to use it just like the USA did. Does it make it more right? Absolutely not, but as a Japanese friend put it: "it's war".

If the war went on, Operation Cherry Blossom would have gone underway and we would probably still be dealing with bubonic plague decades later.

And, as other pointed out, if a land invasion occured, millions more would have died. The atomic bombs weren't even the deadliest events of the war—see the firebombing of Tokyo.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#118

Post by snickerbockers »

slg wrote: post #110
snickerbockers wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same result as what? The OP just explained how the bombs being deployed in the manner they were barely led to a surrender. Anyways, the battle of Okinawa alone killed as many people as both atomic bombs combined and that's the most remote part of (what is today considered) Japan.

>The same result as what? The OP just explained how the bombs being deployed in the manner they were barely led to a surrender. The result of surrendering. What makes you think they wouldn't have surrendered if other targets were bombed?

I'm sure there could have been other targets that would have led to a surrender but if the goal is to do so with a minimal amount of casualties then i find it extremely difficult to believe that it is possible considering that the two targets which were bombed nearly failed to produce the desired result even after a brutal 8-year war.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#119

Post by Findecanor »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #52
userbinator wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the me that exists right now thinks that our military shouldn't have done what it did. It's worth remembering that if it weren't for them doing what they did, you might not have the life you do now.

Maybe? We can go around in circles on this but there were so many other options the Allies could have tried: - Drop the first bomb in the ocean in front of an envoy of observers and give Japan a week to deliberate their response - Blockade the island, threaten land invasion, and wait for the emperor to call for surrender as they gradually run out of fuel - Drop a bomb on Hiroshima but give more than 3 days for the go…

> - Drop the first bomb in the ocean in front of an envoy of observers and give Japan a week to deliberate their response

Seventy scientists on the Manhattan Project signed a petition [0] to president Truman about doing something like that before actually using the bomb, but the petition was intercepted and Truman didn't even hear about it in time.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szil%C3%A1rd_petition

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#120

Post by nelox »

slg wrote: post #95
nelox wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, actually try and put yourself in the shoes of American leadership responsible for making the decision to continue with an invasion of Japan without using nuclear weapons. American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict. The U.S. had limite…

Why is this discussion always a binary choice between a land invasion of Japan or dropping the bombs exactly how we did? For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.

Roughly 18 potential cities were considered, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of five, and eventually finalized into four reserved targets (Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki as alternate).
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