The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan • Hacker News Board

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#211

Post by jbooth » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

Asterick6 wrote: post #193

jbooth wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also noteworthy that the Japanese troops in Manchuria were, from most accounts I've seen, their most veteran land-based army. And the soviets, having fought the Germans for the past 6 years, basically cut through them like butter. That will make you reconsider your position.

^except that's wrong. The best of the Kwangtung army stationed in Manchuria was already shifted to Kyushu and the southern islands of Japan to prepare for the possible US invasion. >"Most of Japan's best troops had been shifted to the southern part of the home islands. Japan's military had correctly guessed that the likely first target of an American invasion would be the southernmost island of Kyushu. The once proud…

Thanks, I didn't know that.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#212

Post by hga » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

Scramblejams wrote: post #116

hga wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The A-bombs were quite unusual. They were extraordinary weapons, and would have required extraordinary justifications to use on the military, let alone on civilians. " Extraordinarily efficient, one plane, one bomb, one city, but we'd already methodically bombed pretty much every other city (along with Kyoto for political reasons, the A-bomb targets and their alternates were reserved), with e.g. the firebombing of…

Yes, I sometimes wonder what a veteran of the American Revolutionary War thought when he first saw the Gatling gun. What would be unusual is if weapon technology _didn't_ increase exponentially in lethality over time. Given enough time even Little Boy will, to future generations, look to be nearly as puny as a flintlock. Hope we don't do ourselves in.

"Yes, I sometimes wonder what a veteran of the American Revolutionary War thought when he first saw the Gatling gun."

Compared to e.g. canister shot from canons I don't think it would have awed them that much (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canister_shot).

Since at least the Napoleonic Wars, which followed shortly after our Revolutionary war, artillery has generally been the biggest killer on the battlefield.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#213

Post by Scramblejams » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #126

Scramblejams wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Negotiate?" The US had no appetite for negotiation at that point -- only unconditional surrender was acceptable. I won't do your research for you, but various factions within the Japanese leadership wanted to put lots of significant things on the table, like maintaining the seat of the emperor, the existing political structure, etc. All were showstoppers to the US.

Yes, that's what I wrote. They wouldn't negotiate because the bombs were on the way. It wasn't unconditional anyway, there were plenty of conditions in the potsdam declaration.

You're badly misunderstanding the history. The Japanese didn't participate in Potsdam. The Allies wrote the declaration by themselves as an ultimatum and issued it to Japan, warning the Japanese of complete destruction if they didn't fully accept it.

"Unconditional" doesn't mean "there are no terms." It means that the loser dictates no terms, while the victor dictates all the terms.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#214

Post by Scramblejams » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 5:25 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #184

Scramblejams wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what you're looking at. He was referring to this message upstream: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5815793

Yes, I know. And then he switched back to the OP as if the two were the same thing, when in fact they're entirely unrelated. That's the dictionary definition of a red herring.

Or he had moved his commentary beyond the original piece to include the commenters whose positions he was criticizing, which is how I read it.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#215

Post by Scramblejams » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #148

refurb wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. Remember there were TWO bombs dropped. Japan didn't surrender after the 1st one. The only thing that matters is that Japan surrendered. That they were "thinking" about it or "close to it" is pretty much irrelevant.

Remember there were two bombs dropped. Japan didn't surrender after the 1st one. But they convened the council to discuss surrender before the second one. The timeline given by the article is: Hiroshima bombed Soviet declaration of war Surrender council convened Nagasaki bombed Surrender

They should have discussed faster.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#216

Post by gruseom » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 5:28 PM UTC

montagg wrote: post #191

gruseom wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems reasonable—thanks. Can you quote where the article actually claims those two things? I'm curious, and I don't disbelieve you, but I really don't want to have to go back and comb through the whole thing again :)

This section, primarily, argues that the atomic bomb created a political out for the Japanese government: > Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan's interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase, and U.S. security would be…

Sure, but that passage is about the political uses of the causal argument that happened to win (and that the OP thinks is incorrect). It makes no counterfactual claims.

dspeyer's point is a good one if (but only if) the article actually does make the two claims he mentioned. Does it? I don't remember.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#217

Post by gruseom » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 5:32 PM UTC

crash78 wrote: post #190

na85 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm very curious now to hear a credible counterargument. Well, Hirohito himself mentioned the bomb and its 'incalculable' destructive potential in his formal announcement of surrender. So at the very least the bomb played a very substantial role in ending the war in the Pacific.

At the end of the article the author describes how (assuming his previous arguments are true) Japan's leaders would still have publicly cited the bomb as a strong reason for their surrender as it "served to deflect blame" from themselves.

Yes, and the question is, how can you really separate these things out? But now that I think of it, there may be a way to actually test this. Did the Japanese leaders' private deliberations diverge significantly from their public statements? If we have access to them and they did, that would be evidence in favor of the face-saving interpretation.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#218

Post by woodchuck64 » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #161

woodchuck64 wrote: post #49

Why revisit the issue? Modern society has evolved morally to be utterly revolted by the killing of civilians of another country intentionally and would never support the use of a nuclear weapon in this fashion. Isn't that all the moral judgement we need?

If you think that "modern society" is that evolved, you're very fortunate that we haven't had anything near total war in 68 years. Morals quickly fall by the wayside when a country's way of life or existence is threatened. Read up on SIOP and the Soviet equivalent, and you'll see that we trained thousands to use nuclear weapons, spent trillions, and the Soviets did as well. The gloss of civilization is a thin veneer…

See Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of our Nature"(http://www.amazon.com/The-Better-Angels-Our-Nature/dp/014312...) to see why I remain much more optimistic than you.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#219

Post by hef19898 » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 7:56 PM UTC

SiVal wrote: post #178

cema wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that context, with no benefit of hindsight, to say that the bomb was not dropped to win the war but just to intimidate the USSR is nonsense. Not just nonsense, but also part of a propaganda war. I cannot read it otherwise (unless the comment had offered a more profound historical analysis, which it has not).

I'm willing to give the HN commenter above the benefit of the doubt that he/she might just be parroting something picked up on campus, but I agree with you that this claim has been part of leftist propaganda for decades.

And that's because only leftist engange in propaganda? Sorry, couldn't help it.... but for the theory that the ONLY reason the bomb was dropped to intimidate the Sowjets is as wrong as the oppossite view point that it soley anded the war and saved millions of lifes. it's both propagande, just from different camps.

Re: The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan

#220

Post by fancyketchup » Tue, Jun 04, 2013, 8:57 PM UTC

rat87 wrote: post #172

fancyketchup wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All were showstoppers to the US. But that isn't true. The seat of the emperor was maintained, at least nominally, so it clearly wasn't a showstopper. The US may have demanded unconditional surrender before the atomic bombings, but it accepted a conditional surrender after.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/2... 1945: Japan signs unconditional surrender > Japanese officials have signed the act of unconditional surrender, finally bringing to an end six years of world war. > Under the terms of the ceasefire, Japan has agreed to end all hostilities, release all prisoners of war, and comply with the terms of the Potsdam declaration, which confines its sovereignty to…

Yes, I'm familiar with how the end of the war was reported by the popular press. That does not, however, change the facts of history.

From Wikipedia[1]: 'Japan's ambassador to Switzerland, observed that "unconditional surrender" applied only to the military and not to the government or the people, and he pleaded that it should be understood that the careful language of Potsdam appeared "to have occasioned a great deal of thought" on the part of the signatory governments—"they seem to have taken pains to save face for us on various points."'

So it seems that both Japan and the Allies understood that unconditional surrender only applied to Japan's military.

Further: 'That day, Hirohito informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka, then asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai (national polity) could not be preserved. The emperor simply replied "of course."'

In other words, Japan was willing to continue fighting, even after the atomic bombings, if it didn't get to insist on a few conditions. That doesn't sound like unconditional surrender to me.

I should also point out that the parent of my original post asserted that any and all Japanese conditions were "showstoppers." I pointed out that, whether or not the emperor's seat was a condition explicitly writing into the surrender documents, at least one of Japan's surrender conditions, namely keeping the emperor in place, was clearly not a showstopper.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan