WMD...was it so necessary?

War is human behavior. Predicting the fall of both Germany and Japan was fairly predictable once the US entered the war. However a number of things could have changed the outcome. The death of Roosevelt and Truman for example. Failure of D Day or Midway could have changed the course by delay. Italy not biting off too much. The Germans not realizing they'd smashed the 101 @ Mar vie. None of those things on its own would have changed the final outcome if not for human behavior at the end.

My dad said what we did conventionally to Japan was far worse than one of the atomic sites he saw.

You can't predict human behavior any more than one in the short run can consistently beat the stock market w o insider info.

Maybe it makes one feel better about one's nation and their actions but attacks on civilian populations is cruel. Italics be a war crime. Winners get to set the aftermath rules.

The argument of saving Japanese civilians is not valid as the US knew about the Jews and was slow to act.

The atomic attack on civilians was cruel and just what war is. Saying it was total war doesn't fly either. Syria for civilians and combatants in areas is total war to them.

So using the same argument then attacks on other countries is not terrorism but war. Even a nuke attack on a US or Russian city?

Live by the sword be prepared to die by such.

Again the attack was cruel. Why do u think the US limited news about the aftermath of the bombing?

We all read about the Soviet brutality during the Hungarian uprising. Few know about what happened to families of Soviet officers prior.

 

I'm guessing what you wrote here is not what you meant.

 

Just revenge and because they could. But at least good to some leaders who could take and implement decisions unlike todays bunch of no hopers. Brian

 

Just revenge? Hardly.

Just revenge would have been to follow the US Navy's course to end the war. Blockade Japan, and starve the lot of them until they surrendered. Millions of Japanese civilians would have died, but this would not begin to happen until 1946-47.

Revenge is a non-starter.

 

No, I meant what I said. The death of both of them MIGHT have changed things. A different leader. Um obviously both didn't die in office. Can you not read for meaning?

 

Yes and no...

After the bombing of civilian targets by both sides in World War I, no rules were set, and no aerial bombardment war criminals were prosecuted. Indeed, throughout the post-WW1/pre-WW2 period, new rules for air warfare were talked about, but nothing that was legally binding ever came about.

Missed opportunities.

And again

The fact that Hiroshima was a military target often is glossed over. Japanese soldiers in Hiroshima, at the time of the bombing, numbered between 40,000-45,000 troops. Of these some 20,000-25,000 died(roughly 1/4 of those killed).

Major military targets in Hiroshima

 

Apparently not. My apologies for misreading you post. I'll try to be less human in the future.

 

And what decisions would you like him to make? Something like Trump SAYS he would do? Or decisions like Bush?

Bomb ISIS out of sight? That works? Do you know how much we dropped on N Vietnam?

Put troops on the ground in Ukraine? That would show Putin.

In Ukraine the US has actually played a difficult situation pretty well....for the time being.

Iraq has been doing pretty well lately (Kurds) in Iraq. One has to look at the long haul to make judgement. And no, I'm not a fan of the Obama admin.

Do you realize how close really Reagan came to nuclear war? Bush Senior? Wonderful decisions.

Clinton? He sure took care of Bin Ladin didn't he?

Decision making Blair? Now he apologizes.

It's not an easy job.

I knew Jerry Parr personally. Jerry knew every President and VP from Kennedy to Clinton. He said that some of the Presidents were arrogant when they came into office, but it didn't take long before the gravity of the office changed that. He said they were all actually pretty good guys eventually. His choice for nicest and most respectful surprised me. Spirow Agnew.

 

There is no meaning to read...

Roosevelt died in office, and Truman stepped up. Yet, the atomic bomb was still dropped.

If Roosevelt had lived, the bomb, in all likelihood would have been dropped.

Just because there may have been a President #3, #4, or #5, who would have entered the picture, probably would not have changed the outcome.

The only "real" way would have been for the atomic bomb not to have worked in the first place.

 

Takao - 2 atom bombs far more immediate - blockades are expensive and not such a show of power. It was just revenge. Brian

 

far more immediate...Does not make a case for revenge, and frankly, the claim is downright laughable.

 

By the same measure, the King of England and that of Italy were also puppets.

 

If FDR had died with Wallace as VP, the war could have taken different turns and the bombs may not have been dropped. Use your imagination.

There is still no way around it. Attacking civilian populations is cruel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hzHspqLT48

https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/656458891162288/?pnref=story

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3186815/The-nightmare-aftermath-Hiroshima-Parents-carry-burned-children-past-corpses-rubble-rare-photographs-taken-days-atomic-bomb-killed-140-000-people.html

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/7114/258/1600/314463/13.jpg

 

Why was the bomb really used? I pretty much agree with this. Yes there were military targets (small by comparison of overall strength).

Ending the war at the earliest possible moment - The primary objective for the U.S. was to win the war at the lowest possible cost. Specifically, Truman was looking for the most effective way to end the war quickly, not for a way to not use the bomb.

To justify the cost of the Manhattan Project - The Manhattan Project was a secret program to which the U.S. had funneled an estimated $1,889,604,000 (in 1945 dollars) through December 31, 1945.

To impress the Soviets - With the end of the war nearing, the Soviets were an important strategic consideration, especially with their military control over most of Eastern Europe. As Yale Professor Gaddis Smith has noted, “It has been demonstrated that the decision to bomb Japan was centrally connected to Truman's confrontational approach to the Soviet Union.” However, this idea is thought to be more appropriately understood as an ancillary benefit of dropping the bomb and not so much its sole purpose.

A lack of incentives not to use the bomb - Weapons were created to be used. By 1945, the bombing of civilians was already an established practice. In fact, the earlier U.S. firebombing campaign of Japan, which began in 1944, killed an estimated 315,922 Japanese, a greater number than the estimated deaths attributed to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The firebombing of Tokyo alone resulted in roughly 100,000Japanese killed.

Responding to Pearl Harbor - When a general raised objections to the use of the bombs, Truman responded by noting the atrocities of Pearl Harbor and said that “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.”

 

I'd say that starving an entire Empire to the point of surrender and killing possibly millions of civilians through malnutrition/lack of resources needed for a modern nation to function is a pretty strong show of power. I don't believe it has ever been done to a nation before at any time in modern military history (please correct me if I am wrong).

Considering that the atomic bombs would have been developed and deploy-able regardless of whether or not a blockade occurred, a several year blockade that demonstrated consistent and extended domination of the seas and skies along thousands of miles of coastline with the long-term monetary, material and public commitment that would be requisite components may well have been a stronger show of force.

 

So, no credence given at all to the fact the militarists who held the actual power in Japan would not surrender under any circumstances of conventional warfare?
That any and all suggestion that they would is frankly laughable?
That the bombs were a juddering shock, of a kind that rammed home to political and military leaders alike that the war, which they started, and had prosecuted with the utmost inhuman cruelty as demanded by a modern application of seventeenth century military codes, was over.

I don't know if you've ever studied the plans for conventional assault on Japan, or the rhetoric of it's leaders right up until the last minute, but if you want a bloodbath it's right there, waiting to happen.
And of course, never to be forgotten on this subject are these chaps.
View attachment 23542
Many of whom would barely have survived weeks more of captivity, let alone years of conventional assault. More liberal revisionary appraisals of the bombs seem to often avoid them...

I'm guessing you haven't really studied the bombs beyond an emotive hypothesis of 'wrongness and cruelty', as you've come to this thread with one theory, and are clinging on while evading the stronger historical truths of the bomb's deployment and the context of preceding years of total war.


I think I may have found the article you took your bullet points from. If not, it's very close and certainly reflects a simular style of modernist hubris that seems to have sprung from certain uni history departments over the years. More to do with guilt and modern mores than an appraisal of contemporary reasons.
A few other interestingly skewed points on there...

 

You really need to expound on these "talking points".

It would also behoove you to quote the blog where you copied this from:
http://csis.org/blog/understanding-decision-drop-bomb-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

It would also behoove you to do some of your own research on this question.

More to the point, it was to end the war in the most effective way in financially and in terms of American lives lost. The Navy's blockade approach would have been the "cheapest" in terms of lives lost, but would have required another year-and-a-half to two years before the Japanese would really begin to feel the full effects of the blockade, and this was after almost a year of the blockade having been established late in 1944.

Lemay, and the USAAF were looking to continue the bombing campaign of Japan. Except the B-29s had been bombing Japan continuously since March, 1945, and Japan was showing no signs of collapsing. The bombing campaign had focused on Japanese cities, and was only recently moving on to destroying Japan's transportation network. The destruction of Japan's transportation net, would greatly hamper Japan's ability to distribute food and resources. And although crippling to Japanese civilians and Japanese industrial production, it had little effect on the Japanese military troops, and what had already been produced and distributed to said troops.

And, then, of course, we have the US Army and the invasion of Japan.

This hardly even entered the picture into the decision to drop the atomic bomb. The only one who was overly concerned about it, IIRC, was General Groves. You forget that there were many individuals who were responsible for the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.

PS - the cost was over $2.1 billion(US) if you look at the Manhattan Project documents. Then, you would have to include the roughly $3 billion(US) to develop and produce the launch platform, B-29 Superfortress.

Again, this was of little import to the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.

Stalin's armies had already marched through many German cities that had been thoroughly demolished by the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany. So, Stalin was well informed of what the West's strategic bombers could do. Further, Japan was a beaten enemy, and she had little with which to defend herself against the American bombers. For the same Atomic attack to have taken place against the Soviets, they must be just as thoroughly beaten - which would be quite a hard proposition given the size of the Soviet Air Force. Finally, the Americans were committed to getting the Soviets into the show against Japan. This was done to divert Japanese attention and troops from the landing areas, so as to hopefully lessen American casualties. We even went so far to give them numerous ships and landing craft to do this.

So, no I don't buy into the belief that the dropping of the Atomic Bomb was a precursor to the Cold War.

And the Japanese were no closer to surrender than when the bombing campaign began...

As you, well, Mr. Donohue anyway, point out, the Japanese leadership was well prepared to sacrifice the lives of their civilians. Several hundreds of thousand of their civilians had already been killed in the bombing...What effect will the loss of another 100,000 make.

IIRC, the number of Japanese civilian deaths was closer to, if not over 400,000 at the time. - but I would have to double check that.

The person was not a "general" in the military sense...But, Mr. Samuel McCrea Cavert, General Secretary, Federal Council of The Churches of Christ in America. It pays to do your research, especially when the information is readily available. I can only presume that Mr. Donohue was under a bit of time pressure to complete his required blog entry for CSIS.

Further, the entire letter is this

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/correspondence/truman-harry/corr_truman_1945-08-11.htm

The "beast..is not that a common religious term for Satan, the Devil, quite apropos to use the term in a letter to one in the religious sector. Truman was no dummy.

 

You are making an assumption that the fire bombing of civilian targets was necessary therefore the hundreds of thousands of deaths were just transferred from conventional to atomic. War is cruel. Either type of bombing on conventional targets is cruel.

Our leadership was cruel. Whether right or not is the issue. I would prefer to live or die by not being cruel if it can be avoided. The question is ...could it have been avoided? The answer is yes.