A different take on the lives saved by the bomb

This may be a very stupid question, but considering the enormous monetary cost for the Manhatten project, with all the people involved in its production, and all the facilities, security, research, and such, does anyone know for sure that this was the cheaper method than an invasion?

From what I heard the project was one of the most costly enterprises in U.S. history.

Again, I am asking this in regards to monetary terms, not human. In human terms, it was well worth it for ending the war for good IMO.

 

It is by no means a stupid question but it needs context. I am presuming you mean that no effort to build a bomb and there for it was never a option.

I do not recall the projects cost (where is T A Gardner when you need him?) but it seems reasonable to say the cost (in money) would be higher.

Olympic was supposed to take place in late 1945 and Coronet in early 1946 with a hopefull end to the war by mid to late 1946. This would entail at least another full year of war production. Casualties would need attending to and the greater devastation of Japan would need to be adressed.

The delayed end of the Pacific War would likely impact both the timeing and scale of the Marshall Plan which would have serious complications for Europe's recovery.

If the war were to last into 1947 the costs would be greater still.

 

Quote from Wiki.

I tried to find the prices for loosing a few capital ships, airplanes, tanks, art, rifles beltbuckles etc but no luck.

The cost for the Bomb would pay dividends in the future in form of energy etc, so the monetary costs are difficult to figure out.

 

We came close, the Cuban Crysis being the most well known one.
Curently we have at least two situations were nealy "back to the wall" nations are nuclear capable, Pakistan and Israel, luckily Pakistan developed nuclear capability after it's dsastrous last big clash with India (also nuclear capable).

IMO you are compaing apples with oranges, as a surrender was not a 100% certain outcome, (if there was reason to believe Japan just needed "one more push" existed it would make the bomb usage even less justified), what you should compare the invasion losses to is the threat, or as you call it "certain destruction".
Nuclear weapons like all true WMDs are basically genocide tools, while their existence on both sides of the fence may lead to a desirable deadlock/peace it's playng with (nuclear) fire.

 

I remember hearing or reading at one point the Soviets asked us if we would mind if they launched an attack vs China to take out their early nuclear capability. (The story being that they asked us because they figured if they just did it we might react to the launch rather than wait and see what the target was). The US suggested that it was probably not a good idea.

 

Here is a link to that story lwd. I posted it a number of months ago. Pretty scary!

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

USSR planned nuclear attack on China in 1969 - Telegraph
__________________

 

No mix up. As a commander you want to aim your efforts at the enemy's center of gravity. I think a quick chat with US service personel fighting against the Japanese soldiers at the time would dispel any notion of "one more push".

There would have been many more pushes and losses of materieel and men to brign about a Japanese surrender.

The other route was to drop the bombs to break the will and ability to keep going. Nobody knew how many of these monsters the US had in store.

As most rationale men I have little love for the bomb or other WMD's, but at that given time in history with the intel and options availiable, I find it to be the obvious choice.

I can't say I agree with the bold bit of the text, but the rest (MAD) is obvious.

 

The first depends on your defintion of WMD's certainly some of the tac nukes were awfully low on the scale to be truly considered such unless a tautological defintion is used. As for being "genoicde tools" no more so than a pistol or a bayonet.

 

I have posted most of this in the past, sometimes in different threads but I thought I should put them together as a response to this latest. One can decry the use of the atomics, but one must also do so from the proper "time-frame" and not use the lens of hindsight to judge the actions of a nation at war with another nation.

After the first atomic bomb fell Aug. 6th, 1945, Hirohito and the military knew about that city's destruction only later that day, but were paralyzed by indecision trying to decide "what" had or "could" have caused this massive destruction, but did NOT send scientific teams to the area to take radiation readings. The were then relying on their information from German physicists and their own nuclear scientists who doubted it was an "atomic explosive". Consequently they didn’t even send a scientific team to either of the bombing areas until after the Nagasaki drop. There was some speculation that this was a NEW type of fire-bombing tactic, which we (allies) had perfected. Toyama had just been wiped off the map by conventional firebombing afterall. Over 90% of Toyama had ceased to exist. Hiroshima was a lesser loss in total structual damage.

Emperor Hirohito did not meet again with his supreme war council until about 11 a.m. Aug. 9th, within a few minutes of when the second bomb fell on Nagasaki. Vague newspaper accounts were published Aug. 8, describing a new bomb inflicting "considerable damage on Hiroshima". The Nagasaki Prefecture's governor only learned about the true extent of Hiroshima's devastation on the evening of Aug. 8th; from an eyewitness from Hiroshima, only hours before his own area was targeted.

"The Japanese military did not want people to know about the atomic bomb," said Tsuia Etchu, founder of Nagasaki's Atomic Bomb museum. (Etchu was an army officer in the city of Fukuoka when the bomb fell.) "If the bomb was not dropped on Nagasaki, the military would have continued the war," Etchu said. "I think dropping the atomic bombs shortened the war."

While it is true that leaflets were dropped, they weren't dropped before the atomics were deployed. Not in either case, we didn't want the Japanese to know where they were going to be dropped for fear of them moving POWs into the areas.

On August 7th, the day after the Hiroshima bombing, it was undertaken to print and distribute millions of leaflets to other major Japanese cities warning of "future atomic attacks".

Clearly not before the "atomics" were deployed. The leaflet dropping, and warnings to Japan by Radio Saipan began on August 8th, between the two "atomics". Nagasaki itself and its environs did not receive any "atomic" warning leaflets until August 10th, the day after its own bombing.

Here is a link to the leaflets dropped on Japan:

Truman Library: Translation of leaflet dropped on the Japanese

On the front side of another OWI notice #2106 (dubbed the "LeMay bombing leaflet") dropped over 35 Japanese cities on August 1st, 1945 was a picture of "B-sans" flying in formation. The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning:

"Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes.

So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war.

We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately."

(See Richard S. R. Hubert, "The OWI Saipan Operation," Official Report to US Information Service, Washington, DC 1946.)"

And don’t forget that by 1945 Hiroshima held these "purely innocent civilian" installations; the 2nd General Army Headquarters, Chugoku Military District Headquarters, always the home of the 5th Division (participated in the Nanking occupation ["rape of"] 1937), 59th Military Headquarters, 224th Division marshaling/training area, 154th Division training, Marine Transport Headquarters, Mitsubishi Heavy Industry yards, Ujina Harbor Kawasaki ship-yards.

Yup, nothing but innocent "civilians" living there. BTW, everybody in the west who cared knew of the Nanking atrocities, since this was the same time and place where the river-gunboat USS Panay was attacked and sunk (along with two Standard Oil tankers), even the Nazi backed businessman John Rabe was appalled by that set of atrocities. The city of Hiroshima had shrunken from nearly 500,000 civilians to less than 300,000 total persons counting the military by August of 1945.

Then from the beginning of the Showa (Hirohito) period through World War II, about 50 % of the commercial ships for transporting goods and such were built in Nagasaki. And as to "warships", one might be enlightened to trace the origin of the ships; "Hyuga", "Kirishima", "Musashi" (the "Yamato's" sister giant battlship), the auxiliary carriers; "Hiyo", "Junyo", the design built carriers; "Chuyo", "Unyo", "Taiyo", "Kaiyo"," Amagi", "Kasagi", or the crusiers "Sendai", "Natori", "Kiso", "Tama", "Furutaka", "Aoba", "Haguro", "Chokai", "Mikuma", "Tone", "Chikuma", and the all the destroyers.

Now, the destroyers produced at that center are too numerous to even consider putting on here, the list is already too long. Nagasaki was also the home to the Nagasaki Steel Works, Mitsubishi Electric Works, and Mitsubishi Munitions plants. It was also the designated center for the defense of Kyushu Island headquarters for the planned and in place Ketsu-Go defense plan.

Today we tend to use the "lens of hindsight" without thinking of the circumstances of that moment in time. What we (Allies) knew, or thought we knew, and what they (Axis/Japan) knew and believed.

Harnessing a "force of nature", expressly the "power of the universe" (incorrect, but used by Truman in his speech), against an "Empire of the Sun", ruled by a "Son of the Sun" was emotionally, politically, and militarily too much to deny as the "beginning of the end".

In the minds of many Japanese we had captured their goddess and used her power against them. The official Japanese religion (Shinto), taught that the emperor is the direct descendant of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. And as such in 1945 he was a living god and could, according to the Shinto religion control nature such as the power of the sun. Shintoism further teaches that the emperor has a duty to bring all the peoples of the world under the rule of Amaterasu a sun goddess whose power is the power of the sun itself.

This bomb, using the "basic power of the universe" made Hirohito, as her son, a fake or fraud and thus perhaps showed he and the others in the war cabinet to be acting without the divine mandate of the goddess. That the hated enemy now had her mandate (and power) was more than just a shock to the average Japanese; it in effect destroyed their world view and their very concept of themselves as Japanese. It wasn’t the destructiveness of the bomb itself, it was the nature of the bomb.

The Japanese would have fought the allies until they were all dead or we had gone back to the US and given up, for fighting men is easy. But how does one fight a goddess? Japan and her people, still deeply religious, believed in the goddess's mandate from heaven, without it they had no choice but to surrender.

The Japanese knew better than to fight with nature, and this was clearly a force of nature. They could fight people who invaded, fires, bullets, and the impact of conventional bombing. They could not and never did fight nature, not tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, or volcanic eruptions.

Soviet entry in to the war between the two atomic explosions, helped make the decision more urgent; but as Hideki Tojo's diary states; the atomic bombs killed the god and goddess of Japan and thus forced the emperor to surrender his nation. The bombs psychological value as a weapon out weighted their destructive and killing power. With the power of their oldest goddess, the creator of Japan and spiritual mother of their emperor now in Allied hands, they knew they had no choice but to accept the terms offered to end the war.

As to clarifying the status of the Emperor post war, one must remember that the retention of the Emperor was discussed in the telegrams between Prince Sato in Moscow and Togo in Tokyo just before the July Potsdam Conference started, and continued until it was underway. We (America) were reading these telegrams in real time, and knew that Stalin was choosing to NOT recognize the Japanese attempts to broker a "peace" on their terms.

Some of which were to withdraw from occupied territories they had conquered since 1937, retain the Emperor without diminishing his authority, and hold their own "war crimes" trials, these were unacceptable to the allies.

The Japanese were insisting the Emperor retain his position and authority clear into August of 1945, a situation which the new president (Truman) was having no part of. When Stalin informed him of the Japanese attempts at arranging a diplomatic meeting, Truman wrote in his diary he was "pleased" that Stalin had told him of the Japanese communications from early July. Truman already knew of them (through "Magic" intercepts) but was reassured by Stalin’s offering the information independently.

If Truman had spelled out that the Emperor could be retained in a subservient role in the Potsdam Declaration, as happened historically, the Japanese probably wouldn't have accepted that condition at that time either. Remember, the Emperor was still revered as a deity incarnate and subordinate to no mortal.

It literally took the atomics for that position to be altered to the point of all Japanese recognizing that their war and Empire was lost, and coupled with the Red Army advancing into their northern territories, they simply had to accept the demands of Potsdam if they were to survive as a people and culture.

If they hadn't then "Bull" Halsey might have gotten his wish as he steamed back into Pearl Harbor; "When we are done with them, Japanese will only be spoken in hell." (paraphrasing)

At the end however, the use of them on those two cities most certainly precipitated a "tense" situation of MAD (mutally assured destruction) during the cold war. And NO nukes were used in the entire time period. That speaks for the use of them, not against their use. Sometimes even war becomes too impersonal to accept.

 

Brndirt1-- your post is very eloquent and intelligent, but I think you omit some important context and bits of information.

First, we often forget there were other choices than just drop or don't drop. 150 scientists wrote a letter urging that it be dropped in the ocean, or on an uninhabited island, where the Japanese leaders could see it's power. For scientists it wasn't a particularly bright idea, but there were choices in between: we could have dropped the first bomb on an uninhabited part of Japan-- that certainly would have shown them the power first hand. Or, as you mentioned, we could have dropped leaflets on Hiroshima warning them to leave. But the atomic committee expressly advised against warning the Japanese in their recommendations.

Keeping that advice in mind, consider that Hiroshima was, in fact, almost entirely a civilian city. You mention a number of military facilities, but the number of military casualties from the bombing provide a more accurate portrayal: the percentage of military casualties ranged from 4-15% depending on the calculation. Furthermore, the target was specifically "city center" Hiroshima, not the shipyards which were a couple of miles away or any specific military facility. Years later when discussing the atomic bomb in regards to Korea, Truman said it was not a military weapon, it was a weapon to wipe out "women and children, and not for military purposes." This from a man who said he never reflected on his decision.

I don't buy the argument that lives were saved, either future lives or in that moment, for a couple of reasons. First, Truman knew that American casualties from a land invasion would be 31,000 not 500,000 (the oft quoted number). He knew that because he'd read the Joint War Plans Committee Report of July 15th, in which almost everyone agreed on that number. The report can be found at http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/pdfs/21.pdf#zoom=100

Second, however briefly, Truman and Stalin talked about the Emperor's request for the Russians to broker a peace settlement and decided against it. However divided the Japanese leadership was on the issue, in the end they would have to follow the Emperor's wishes, because as you point out he was the deity incarnate. They would, and did, bow to his authority in the end. How long would it have taken without the bomb? Hard to say, but we weren't scheduled to invade for weeks. Russia-- the country they had gone to for help-- was declaring war on them instead. And all of the other Axis powers had fallen. Not to mention that even though they AGREED to unconditional surrender, Japan still negotiated retention of the Emperor, so there must have been some figuring from the beginning that all would not be lost even under the Potsdam conditions. I believe that if we had offered the terms we eventually agreed to, Japan would have surrendered immediately after Russia's declaration of war.

Did the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki convince world leaders to not use atomic bombs as first strike weapons? Well, they'd have to be pretty stupid to do so, especially after developing and testing their power-- not mention knowing that others had the same power. Only a lunatic leader would use one, and the threat of that happening isn't any less today.

So no, I don't think that the MAD (Mutuallly Assured Destruction) scenario was much of a success: it created a heckalot of suffering. And I don't think that the fact neither Russia nor America used atomic weapons during the cold war has anything to do with the fact that they saw first hand the damage. That's not the nature of MAD; the nature of MAD is that you'll die just as surely as your enemy. Testing of atomic bombs proved that just as eloquently.

 

MAD did and still does prevent all out war between nuclear capable states, always assuming a madman doesn't get to lead one of course.
But "total war" is an exception to the rule, most armed conflicts do not have the complete destruction of the enemy as objective. It still leaves a lot of other options like "proxy-wars" or "police actions" within a superpower's area of influence open and these options have been widely used after WW2.

Having an insurance against total war, and being proof against nuclear blackmail, is a desirable thing for a state, so the number of nuclear states is likely to grow unless everybody gives them up or more balanced NPT treaties bans first use ad commit all signatories to intervene against first users.

A weapon that can wipe out human life from the face of the earth is a "genocide weapon", the less of the things are around the better off we are no matter who controls them, a way to roll back stocks without creating a "window of opportunity" for some crazy can be devised but the first logical step is a ban on first use, without that we are not going to get anywhere.

 

First: This document is a consideration not of an invasion of Japan in toto, but of the island of Kyushu. The only estimates given here refer only to this and not to what Secretary Forestall called "the main decision." (p. 6 paragraph 10.)

As to what the Joint Chiefs, secretaries of War and Navy, and President of the United States "knew" one passage in particular is quite demonstrative:

"Our experience in the Pacific war is so diverse as to casualties that it is considered wrong to give any estimate in numbers."

The document was prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This sentence, the very first in the subsection describing casualties, is quite unambiguous in saying that the Joint Chiefs have no confidence in any estimates that might follow. Truman is seeking their advice and they are unwilling to give him any firm numbers.

A little later in the same section the preparers go on to say "There is reason to believe that the first 30 days in Kyushu should not exceed the price we paid for Luzon." (p. 3 paragraph 5. I add the bold for emphasis.)

This tells us several things: First, the invasion of Kyushu alone is expected to take longer than 30 days; second, casualties will likely continue at some rate thereafter; and third, the confidence in even this rather specific question is not high. (Given the very tentative terms the Joint Chiefs use.)

This document doesn't really clearly tell us much if anything save that the Joint Chiefs believed an invasion of Japan would be lengthy, complex, time consuming, and costly, but ultimately possible. (Which we all know well.)

But if you want to speculate a bit, I suppose we might use this as the basis. Stimson believes that a direct invasion of Japan will galvanize the Japanese people in their martial opposition to the United States. (p. 6 paragraphs 6-8.) Honshu is larger, more urban, more populous, and more symbolically, ceremonially, and politically significant than any other island in Japan. Admiral King, at least, foresaw an assault of Honshu culminating in battle on the Tokyo Plain, and none of the joint Chiefs saw the Kyushu operation as final. For logistical reasons, an invasion of Honshu could not go forward until some months after Kyushu had been secured.

The document makes no specific claims vis a vie Honshu, but it is reasonable to speculate on it's basis that such an invasion would be opposed by a more organized, more enraged, and much larger populace (and military). Casualties could in no way be expected to be lower than those preceding and might well be much higher. Further, these estimates really only discuss U.S. infantry casualties. A prolonged assault would necessarily also involve numerous additional naval and aerial casualties. And this doesn't even begin to count the Japanese casualties such an assault might entail.

In short, this document says more or less the opposite of what you present. You might reread it. Try a little harder this time. And if you wish to make a poorly supported argument on scanty evidence, don't provide the link to your "source." (Which is more or less the advice I gave to a Freshman who plagiarized a document she had handed in to me for other reasons.)

 

(Will the conspiracy theories ever end?)

 

It was most certainly not unanimus in casualty projections. In the document you provided (the meeting took place 18 June not 15 July), Adm. Leahy states that we could apply the 35% attributable to Okinawa. This would place the number of casulties at above 200,000

I think when looking at the lives saved by the atomic bombs you are looking at numbers of just the Japanese and Allies making an invasion of the Japanese homeland. Unfortunaltly the war was still ongoing in other area's of the world.

Besides the already mentioned first 30 days, I also noted that the casualty estimates are based on only 8 Japanese divisions totaling over 350,000 troops , yet Japan "packed Kyushu with defenders ultimately totaling fourteen divisions and eleven brigades." Downfall pg 170

and also

*Historian Robert Newman

 

I would suggest you peruse this site on what was known (or projected) concerning the invasions of the home islands of Japan.

It is much more definitive and makes the casualty toll estimates more understandable than the short synopsis used in other areas.

Goto:

CASUALTY PROJECTIONS FOR THE U

And then scroll down to the area which begins to deal with WW2 specifically, about ¼ of the way down the page. It show the ambiguity felt at the highest levels of the "estimation" groups, from impossibly low "guesses" to extremely pessimistic opinions.

This page includes this statement form a Dr. Shockley which was completed as the President and his troupe had left for Potsdam; Shockley utilized the analyses of Dr. DeBakey and Dr. Beebe, and discussed the matter in depth with Professor Quincy Wright from the University of Chicago, author of the highly-respected A Study of War; and Colonel James McCormack, Jr., a Military Intelligence officer and former Rhodes Scholar who served in the OPD's small but influential Strategic Policy Section with another former Rhodes Scholar, Colonel Dean Rusk. Shockley said:

"If the study shows that the behavior of nations in all historical cases comparable to Japan's has in fact been invariably consistent with the behavior of the troops in battle, then it means that the Japanese dead and ineffectives at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall probably have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including [between] 400,000 and 800,000 killed."
　
Of course the use of the atomic bombs allowed the most devastating typhoon (Typhoon Louise) experienced by the US Navy to NOT have an impact on the casualty total of the allies when it hit in Oct. of 1945, just when the build up on Okinawa would be hitting its peak.

This would have also postponed the Operation Olympic plans until the forces could be re-built, and might have made the resistance on the Japanese homeland even more fanatical. Their ancient belief of being preferred by the gods, and had been "saved from invasion by the divine wind", just as they had been when Kublai Khan tried to subjugate the Japanese centuries before.


Use the search funciton here on the forum and type in the terms Typhoon Louise, and Okinawa for a better idea of just how devastating that weather impact would have been if Okinawa wasn't already close to empty of sailors, soldiers, and airmen. The term Ketsu-Go might also have references to Typhoon Louise, I forget if it does or not.

 

I've just read through this thread, and there' an aspct to the saving of lives by dropping the Atomic Bombs that's been neglected up to now...

It prevented a terrible humanitarian disaster occuring in Japan! And I'm NOT talking about the hundreds of thousands if not millions of civilians that would be killed in the fighting like Okinawa.

The Japanese plan to reduce the effects of the cranked up strategic bombing campaign after the taking of Okinawa included herding the civilian urban populations of Japan's largest cities onto trains and just depositing them in the country, miles from any urban centre...and there to fend for themselves. No provisions were made for...well...provisions; they were literally to fend for themselves.

Not only would this have effetively protected them from the firebombing, but also of course from continued Atomic bombardment if it had been put in motion. BUT by the time OLYMPIC and CORONET took place, the Allies would have been assaulting Japanese Home Islands that were full of hundreds of thousands if not millions of said civilians already dead of hunger or rapidly starving to death...

 

has anyone here mentioned that Japan offered to surrender on several occasions, each one rebuffed by the U.S.?

And that the last offer asked ONLY that the monarchy remain, including that Akihito could become token emperor as he was still a child?

Conspiracy theories then state that the U.S. needed to test the weapons on a populated city, and that they needed to drop both bombs because of the different materials they were made with...

 

I don't believe that at anytime Japan made an offer of anything substantial. Indeed most of what I have read claims that Japan was looking for terms eerily similar to Versailles. Not to mention the US never once rejected a peace offer from Japan, since one never came until after the bombs had been dropped.

 

as Mike pointed out there were no serious offers made by the Imperial Japanese until after the bombs were detonated, and the Soviets had declared war and started advancing from the north.

The offers were never taken by the Soviets nor were they proffered to the western allies while the Potsdam meeting was getting going. When they (Japanese) finally made their first serious offer through the Swiss and Swedes, it was rejected as it demanded the Emperor retain his "sovereign rights and powers". That was rejected, and the counter-offer of the Emperor being retained in a subsevient role to the Allied Supreme Commander was accepted.

There is no proof of the conspiracy, in either instance. Not the need to test it on people, nor to test two different materials. Both untrue.