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Hiroshima (1946)

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Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#191
post #84

If anyone thinks that dropping the bombs was unnecessary, I would recommend reading Barrett's 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon : * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir... * https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-... It documents, using Japanese source material including interviews with the principals involved, the decision making…

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…

> 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.

Per Barrett, some Japan leadership said that as many as 20M Japanese (civilians) would die in a defence of an invasion (but also because of starvation and such), and the leadership was fine with that.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forget who exactly, but someone correctly said after Versailles that it was no armistice but a twenty-year ceasefire. What you advocate would have been another.

Can you explain why you think that's what I'm advocating?

> I am one of those that think that the dropping of the bombs was unnecessary.

I have never been able to credit the idea that, after decades of the very liveliest and most systematically institutional brutality, the Empire of Japan was suddenly seized by a new dovish spirit of peace and cooperation, one second before the initiation of the Hiroshima device killed a quarter million people, or one second before the Nagasaki device killed a hundred thousand or so more.

I have never even understood where in that dream lies its appeal.

(See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44797067 wherein is belatedly addressed your actual question.)

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#193
post #95
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.

> For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.

There weren't many targets left. The US had been fire bombing Japan for months—which did nothing to lead the Japanese leadership to surrender.

The leadership didn't seem to care about losses—or rather the honour of Japan as a country/collective was more important than the losses (?). Some internal Japanese estimates had up to 20M dead from defending against a US landing and the Japanese leadership was fine with that.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#194
I get that people have this fascination for what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but was it really worse than the incendiary bombing of other cities?

These were all horrific events only meant to harm civilians. The whole bombing campaign was and I feel that focusing on these two cities makes us underestimate the dimension of the tragedy.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#195

I get that people have this fascination for what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but was it really worse than the incendiary bombing of other cities? These were all horrific events only meant to harm civilians. The whole bombing campaign was and I feel that focusing on these two cities makes us underestimate the dimension of the tragedy.

Example: the firebombing of Toyama on Aug 1, 1945. 99.5% of the city was destroyed, a record perhaps unequaled in the history of warfare (vs. about 1/3rd of Nagasaki).

And the conventional bombing of Japan was just getting started. It would have escalated massively had Japan not surrendered.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#196

If anyone thinks that dropping the bombs was unnecessary, I would recommend reading Barrett's 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon : * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir... * https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-... It documents, using Japanese source material including interviews with the principals involved, the decision making…

I am one of those that think that the dropping of the bombs was unnecessary. The decision is complicated and multifaceted. It's also difficult to know what could have happened if they hadn't done it. If my brother had been born a woman, he'd have been my sister. To your point of some people refusing to surrender on the Japanese side, on the US side Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Admiral Will…

> To your point of some people refusing to surrender on the Japanese side, on the US side Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Admiral William Leahy opposed the dropping of the bombs, and viewed it as completely unnecessary. Does this then demonstrate it was not needed, because there were elements who did not support it?

MacArthur wanted to invade. He wanted to invade with Olympic even though Kyūshū had been built-up extensively by the Japanese so that the initial plans having a 3:1 US troop advantage dropped to a 1:1 ratio:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Allied_re-e...

This was lunacy.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your use of the term "peace" instead of "surrender". As a result of this unconditional surrender Japan was reformed in a way that's very beneficial to the rest of the world (and, you could say, itself). A different way could have left an adversary with grudge just waiting to rebuild, but how things turned out completely took the fighting spirit out of Japan.

That's not my intention of the word peace. Whether through surrender or negotiation, it's the end goal I'm referring to.

Oh, I see. I misread your earlier comment as asking what I thought you advocated, rather than why I thought so. Let me try here to answer your actual question there.

I consider generally that to have left the Imperial flower intact through a negotiated surrender - even if achievable which I seriously doubt - would have led in about a generation to a dangerously resurgent sense of revanchism, as actually occurred in the 1960s, but was a matter largely of fringe comedy because the 1960s in Japan were not really such as to make anyone other than cranks wish for the return of the empire. In a future drawn with the gentler hand you describe, I think that time would not have been funny at all; that would, historically speaking including in my own earlier reference to Versailles, in fact be just the sort of movement to prompt yet another Pacific war - which if prevented would only be so because if not occupied by the United States, Japan would have faced Soviet conquest (remember Tsushima!), which famously left no flowers of any kind intact within its reach: they would surely have had a constant and enormous problem with civilian "misbehavior," no doubt resulting in collective punishment, but would succeed in keeping the victim off the world stage.

The idea of Soviet occupation as preferable is heterodox to say the least, but I'm still also very confused as to what sort of terms you think could have been achieved by either Truman or Hirohito, in the absence of the demonstration strikes whose necessity you discount, when even in their aftermath there was a somewhat credible military coup attempt, the so-called "Kyūjō incident," with the aim of continuing the war. That attempt failed because attack orders, sent under the name of a murdered major general, were ignored. They did not have to be. And you don't seem more interested in considering Stalin's extremely compelling reasons to spoil any multilateral peace negotiations that might occur, and the again potentially war-starting impact of an attempt at unilateral negotiations which it is hard to imagine even (the admittedly somewhat bellicose in comparison with his predecessor) Truman seriously contemplating.

You say peace is the goal, and no one disagrees. The problem that remains is to explain how peace is a consequence of the course of action you would prefer had been taken. It isn't so much that I disagree with your historical analysis as that I am asking you to present it.

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think that's what I'm advocating?

Your use of the term "peace" instead of "surrender". As a result of this unconditional surrender Japan was reformed in a way that's very beneficial to the rest of the world (and, you could say, itself). A different way could have left an adversary with grudge just waiting to rebuild, but how things turned out completely took the fighting spirit out of Japan.

> Your use of the term "peace" instead of "surrender". As a result of this unconditional surrender Japan was reformed in a way that's very beneficial to the rest of the world (and, you could say, itself).

In the novel The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick it is argued that Japan and Germany lost WW2 by winning it. IRL, they won WW2 by losing it.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#199

I get that people have this fascination for what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but was it really worse than the incendiary bombing of other cities? These were all horrific events only meant to harm civilians. The whole bombing campaign was and I feel that focusing on these two cities makes us underestimate the dimension of the tragedy.

I recommend again and again Alex Wellerstein's blog on all those topics: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

Re: Hiroshima (1946)

#200

If anyone thinks that dropping the bombs was unnecessary, I would recommend reading Barrett's 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon : * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir... * https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-... It documents, using Japanese source material including interviews with the principals involved, the decision making…

Isn’t it clearly a horrific crime against humanity to knowingly, instantaneously, and with premeditation, murder hundreds of thousands of civilians? The normal response to this line of reasoning is that they were / could have been doing the same to us. Two wrongs does not make a right does it?

> Isn’t it clearly a horrific crime against humanity to knowingly, instantaneously, and with premeditation, murder hundreds of thousands of civilians?

What does "civilian" mean when it comes to Imperial Japan?

* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-are-no-...

The official Japanese plan to defend against a US landing was to have children attack the invading US soldiers:

* https://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=141048

* https://apjjf.org/mark-ealey/1689/article

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_K...

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