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Hiroshima (1946)
211–220 of 275 posts
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with you in that decisions like this are always the outcome of multiple forces pushing different ways. But I would lean more to thinking it would have been very difficult for Trueman to have not ordered the use of the bombs. It would have been electoral suicide because of the extra US casualties. It would probably have led to the partition of Japan as well as Korea, leading to problems for the US in the post-…
> it would have been very difficult for Trueman to have not ordered the use of the bombs. He didn't really though, did he? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both on the "to be bombed" list since at least a month before Truman became President, well before he even learned of the existence of the ultra secret atomic bomb program. The March 1945 Tokyo bombing marked the beginning of a total war aerial bombardment campaign tha…
> He had little choice, not because of an electorate that knew nothing of the secret weapons and wouldn't know if they were not used, but because of the near unstoppable force of the greatest R&D weapons expenditure in the world to that point .. viewed by many in the know as entirely wasted unless used in war against the Japanese now that the Germans had surrendered before they could be used there.
He allowed the first two bombings to occur as President, as was intially planned when he was still VP. He knew they would occur and was okay with it.
He could have stopped them. This evidenced by the fact that there were also plans for bombs 3+ but he ordered that any further bombings were to be under his explicit (as opposed to implicit) orders.
To think that somehow the Manhattan Project was "unstopped" is ludicrous. Every order Truman gave was followed, and if want want to argue it was "unstoppable" you would have to produce some kind of evidence that people were willing to disobey Truman's orders. (And object to or think is a bad idea is not the same as disobey.)
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
> 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 […]
See also Germany post-World War One: the other side (as a collective/society) not only has to be defeated they have to accept the fact they were defeated.
This was one of the hindsight things that I've heard said about Japan post-WW2: it may have been 'fine' to allow Hirohito to stay on as Emperor in 1945 and for a few years afterwards, but at some point the Japanese leadership should have been tried, and this includes Hirohito: he should have had to abdicate and then be tried.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#214Would the atom bomb have been used on Germany ? Japan was giving up, but it wasn't a white majority population country. Hence the atom bomb was used to show the soviets America's new toy. & after that the world changed. the bombs should have never been developed or even dropped.
It is very likely: the atomic bomb was initially built to defeat Nazi Germany, and the Manhattan program was started before Pearl Harbour. When you read The Atomic Bomb book, many scientists who worked on the bomb justified their effort by defeating the Nazis, and many had to escape from Europe.
Once it became clear Nazi were about to be defeated, there were discussions from the scientists about sharing the knowledge w/ all countries. But at that point, the scientists had long lost control over the project.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the moral lesson: if we have a WW3, don't target civilians? What if our enemies are doing exactly that without compunction? What if civilians and military infrastructure are colocated? What if those civilians simply want us all to die and will work to any ends for that result (e.g. they may have been effectively brainwashed as the allies were indeed preparing for with Japan)? It's not that the answers are mora…
Targeting civilians is a war crime. No excuse for that. Targeting civilians in places like Tokyo or Dresden didn't even help the war cause much. The Soviet Union defeated the Nazis without mass bombings of German cities. Yes war is the supreme crime and what we should avoid in the first place. Still there are different ways you can conduct war. A nuclear exchange would necessarily target civilians and be unlike anyth…
Unfortunately in total war situations the line between civilian and not is blurred and not just blurred by the aggressor (as a sibling comment has pointed out). That doesn't really justify anything though, I agree, and something like a nuclear war targeting civilians is just terminal for civilisation.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
With your logic, it would be ok for Isreal to nuke Gaza now ond for Russia to nuke the Ukraine.
Both Israel and Russia are aggressors in the wars. It’s really not comparable. Would Ukraine have every right to use atom bomb if it had one? Absolutely.
"Both Israel and Russia are aggressors"
Yeah, for anyone with more then one functioning brain cell, Russia attacked Ukraine. Gaza attacked Israel. Both Muslims and Russia are the same axis.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the alternatives of nationalism are to fight to the very last man, and cause 8 times the number of casualties. ( Perhaps somewhat more...). Hirohito knew that the military was going to do that.
With your logic, it would be ok for Isreal to nuke Gaza now ond for Russia to nuke the Ukraine.
Gaza is an existential threat to Israel more then Japan ever was to the U.S.
so, yeah.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#218If 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…
AFIK they were looking for ways to surrender while saving face. They were using the Russians as the negotiators. The US didn't want that so they bombed instead.
> AFIK they were looking for ways to surrender while saving face.
They were also looking to keep all the land they had conquered.
If Nazi Germany was willing to surrender would we have been okay with it if they got to keep the Czech Republic, Poland, northern France?
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#219>A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died. People will say the same thing about Gaza one day.
Then they will remember that October 7 was recorded by Hamas rapists.
Re: Hiroshima (1946)
#220If 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…
Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb". Many US military experts and top generals believed it was unnecessary. Japan was defeated, particularly with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, it was over for them.
> Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb".
"definitive"? What does that even mean in a field of study like history? You're telling me there has been zero new analysis on the subject since 1995? No new insights?
And even that assumes that Alperovitz's initial premises were valid, that he did not miss any evidence,or exclude or discount any because his own biases and such, and so that is conclusions followed logically from all of that.
How is it "definitive"?