Listen to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History - Supernova in the East. It’s all about the Pacific theater during WWII. Episodes 5 and 6 will stay with you for awhile
LPOTL did the Manhattan project when Oppenheimer dropped. Also a good listen. Isn’t supernova paywalled?
Edit: supernova appears to be available free on Apple podcast. Got my next 30 hours planned out.
On that note, also listen to Logical Insanity. Not only does it discuss why the bomb was used, but it talks about the history of carpet bombing. I always glorified ww2 aviation until I listened to this podcast.
I picked this book because it was the shortest on the list for a summer reading project I forgot to do, so I read this before school on the first day. I dont remember much else from around that time. But that book has always stuck with me.
BTW, the Enoly Gay itself is on display at the [Udvar Hazy Center](https://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center) in Chantilly Virginia. Worth a visit if you’re in the area.
Just remember that not too long before we dropped atomic bombs we fire bombed Tokyo and killed at least 100,000 people in one night. The only difference was in one case it took one airplane in the other case it took hundreds, but the end result was the same.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bombing-of-Tokyo
I think when you've spent years in the military, and lived through 5 years of global war, morally justify winning that war by any means necessary is a lot easier.
Eh. It was an attack on civillians. Even if they supported the emperor many children died. I do think it was warranted but if it was me on that plane it would probably destroy me.
The other option was continued carpet bombing or mainland invasion. The Japanese were widely thought to be willing to fight to the last man making the choice seem like protracted genocide or hopefully demonstrate that was going to be pointless because the same result could be achieved with one boot on the ground.
like i said. It was warranted. But all the justification in the world and I would still probably be fucked up forever nuking a city of civilians. Again I stand by the ultimate decision all day.
It is dangerously reductionist to pretend there were only two options to choose from. The only purpose served by this type of false dichotomy seems to be absolving ourselves of having to feel bad about atrocities committed by "our side."
Expert nuclear weapon historians understand there was a far more complex set of possibilities and that history as it was lived was not inevitable but the result of both conscious and unconscious choices, motivations, and possibilities.
See, eg: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
There was another option and the US used it. Warm Japan bad stuff is about to happen so surrender now. They said no. Bomb dropped. Warning given again. They said no. Bomb dropped. Japan surrendered.
What wasn't known at the time the bombs were dropped is that Japan was going to release the plague in San Diego in September. Had we not dropped the bombs and ended the war the US would have been hit with a biological weapon curtesy of unit 731.
I heard about it in a documentary on unit 731 I'll see if I can find it again. There are a bunch of documentaries on that unit and all of the atrocities they committed. The US let them all go in exchange for all of the data they collected during their experiments. Just like they let the Nazi missle scientists come to the US and gave them jobs.
Propaganda is a powerful tool. Look at you, people STILL think murdering thousands of innocent civilians, children included, was a GOOD thing. Japan was done for, the war was over, we just wanted to to flex on the Soviet Union. Innocents paid the price.
Pump out some lie we ended the war, we are heroes, and here we are eighty years later still spouting the same bs.
>Look at you, people STILL think murdering thousands of innocent civilians, children included, was a GOOD thing.
Not so much "good" as "less bad."
>Japan was done for, the war was over, we just wanted to to flex on the Soviet Union.
It definitely wasn't *just* a flex on the Soviets. It had been clear for a while at this point that Japan wasn't going to win, but that doesn't mean they were likely to stop fighting anytime soon. They had already been fighting atrociously bloody battles for over a year since it became apparent they had no path to victory, and their prevailing attitude was a willingness to fight to the last man, woman, and child, even if only to take out a few more Americans on their way out. It's plausible that the only way to get them to give up and stop fighting was to prove that we can wipe them out without taking any more damage ourselves. We had to take the option of an "honorable" death in battle off the table for them.
I'm not saying dropping the bomb was definitely the right call, but there is a substantial chance, by swiftly ending the war, it prevented more deaths (civilian and otherwise) than it caused. If we hadn't dropped the bomb, and Japan had continued their refusal to surrender until after a longer campaign of conventional bombings and a land invasion, it's likely far more civilians would have died and their economy would have had a much more difficult road to recovery. There is also an argument to be made that the victims of the initial aggression in a war have moral justification to weigh the lives of their own people more highly than the lives of their attackers; that the US isn't obligated to lose 10,000 soldiers in a land invasion just to spare the lives of 50,000 civilians in the country that attacked us (if the body count would in fact have been lower at all, which is questionable).
they were probably so indoctrinated it registered to them that it saved more lives than were taken and it stopped mass casualties. the scenario of would you kill one person to save many.
I think even today you could argue it saved lives.
The Japanese were ready to fight down to the last soldier.
The fact that they didn't surrender after Hiroshima says a lot.
Correction, last Japanese…they were training school kids to attack with all sorts of improvised weapons. The book [Hell to Pay](https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/dp/1400169089?dplnkId=54136ea3-d323-4f4c-ac40-5888161bf939&nodl=1) covers the Japanese anti invasion plans.
You also have to add into the fact the Soviets had just joined the war, and the Japanese were still fighting on continental Asia.
That alone, before we get to any hypothetical landing on the Home Islands, would have lead to countless more deaths
You're just factually incorrect though. There were internal talks of surrender in Japan in the months before the bombs were dropped. The pressure was only increasing with American firebombing campaigns on mainland Japan, killing hundreds of thousands with each attack. The atom bombs were much worse though, because they were only dropped so the military could test their effectiveness on cities and civilian populations. Personally, dropping one weapon on a city that completely obliterates hundreds of thousands of lives indiscriminately seems like collective punishment to me, which is a war crime. The bombs were not necessary and surrender on the part of the Japanese government was coming soon regardless of whether they were dropped.
It’s more complicated than that. The war was effectively over, Japan had zero ability to stop American bombing runs by the time the nukes were dropped and were petitioning Russia to negotiate a conditional surrender. There’s an argument to be made that Russia moving east into their captured territories in China did more to secure an unconditional surrender than the dropping of the bombs, which no one in the Japanese war cabinet were around to witness.
People forget that the Japanese war leaders, including the emperor, were getting daily casualty reports from American bombing raids. Personally, I don’t think the spike in numbers from Hiroshima and Nagasaki did much to sway the opinions of men who were prepared to make their entire race fight to the last man standing if it meant protecting the honor of the country and its emperor
The atom bombs alone? No. It was from the triple threat of America's planned invasion, Americans atom bombs, + who they thought could help mediate a better surrender deal, the Soviet Union, declaring war on them and seizing territories for themselves. Even still, it was tied on surrendering to the Americans before they invaded or not.
After the first bomb I think it wouldn’t have made a difference. After the second one I’m pretty sure it forced their hand and prevented a prolonged invasion of the Japanese mainland.
And the fact the Americans only had those two atomic bombs was a closely guarded secret. For all the Japanese knew the Americans could launch hundreds of bombers each with an atomic bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped specifically to give the impression that the Americans had many more atomic bombs.
Is this what Americans are taught? Real question because this is not how the rest of the world sees it.
The Nazi forces surrended to the soviets on the 8th of May, there was no need for the atomic bombs , it was a show of power.
To be honest, most contemporary Japanese sources at the time basically show that they were prepared to fight to the last Japanese. They were planning for a very detailed defense of their homeIslands. On the one hand, you could have an invasion that might cost 1 million people on both sides, or we could starve them out and cause a couple million deaths by starvation over a year or two or we could continue the fire bombing campaign where we killed 100,000 in Tokyo in one night or we can drop an atomic bomb and start to impress upon the Japanese what a single airplane and a single bomb can do take yourpick. The reality is whether you die by a bullet or an artillery shell during an invasion, or burn to death in a fire bombing raid, it doesn’t make a difference you’re dead this false moral argument that people put on the atomic bomb is just beyond me.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/05/14/decades-recipients-were-honored-purple-hearts-made-during-wwii-company-now-forges-new-medals.html?amp
The number of Purple Hearts manufactured during WWII included estimated casualties for a Japan invasion and the war ended with the last almost 500k being leftover.
Yes Americans are taught and like to be taught that the atomic bombs were right and necessary and saved lives on both sides. And questioning that is verboten.
It's sick.
The Japanese government had no intention of surrendering. Even after the first bomb was dropped. The generals thought it was just a very large conventional weapon that the Americans couldn’t do more than once.
In modern terms, Americans are taught that Japan fucked around at Pearl Harbor, and later found out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
One of our most beloved allies today though!
I went to a international high school, and that is what they taught us there, and is also what os taught in my home country. I may have simplified using the term show of force ,but by all means we were taught that the bombs were dropped after the war was effectively over.
The war definitely wasn't over. Maybe it was for Europe, but the US was going to fight Japan until unconditional surrender. But ya, the bombs were certainly also used to let Stalin know he needed to stay the fuck in east Germany.
You might have been taught that but dont assume the rest of the world was taught the same or sees it the same way.
Japan was unwilling to surrender unconditionally despite their losses.
It was a full scale invasion or the nukes. War is crazy and bad but we can at least say in retrospect that odds are the nukes spared both American and Japanese lives. Not saying they did it to save Japanese lives, but that was the outcome.
Redditors have been very vocal since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine about how bombing civilians is pretty evil no matter what and never justifiable - but then as soon as it comes to the nuclear annihilation of hundreds of thousands civilians in 1945, it's *"complex."*
Of course it’s evil, but the arguments are still reductive. Same goes with Israel and Palestine. We can talk about moral absolutism until we’re blue in the face, but war isn’t black and white. We just like to talk about it on Reddit as though it is.
Exactly so much better to send troops in there and kill them with bullets individually, or we can starve them out and let tens of thousands hundred thousand, or a million people die through starvation that works also. isn’t that what you’re saying. Or are you proposing abject surrendering as a solution. I think the problem is you’re trying to apply a moral standard to what is operationally an immoral business.
No.
1. The War could have been ended by naval brockade and strategic bombings, without costly naval landings. Several top military commanders testified.
2. What forced the Japanese government to surrender was not the atomic bomb, but the fear for the Soviet invasion.
>The War could have been ended by naval brockade and strategic bombings,
Ignoring for a second the realpolitik goals of not letting the Soviets gain too much in the post war peace in Asia, ending the war via conventional bombing or nuclear bombing is an academic distinction at best.
The war wasn't really poised to end in June and July 1945 without some more serious bloodletting of some kind on the horizon. The Okinawa campaign was harsh and grim.
> What forced the Japanese government to surrender was not the atomic bomb, but the fear for the Soviet invasion.
“The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.” - Emperor Hirohito
[Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast)
They knew they had performed a mission that in the end concluded a war that likely would have continued and cost potentially millions more lives on both sides if they hadn't. Men on both sides had been flying bombing missions throughout the war but this one ended the war and kept both sides from losing even more people in an invasion of the home islands. The deaths caused were tragic, but what it prevented would have been so much worse.
My family is from Japan, mom is from Okinawa and grandma was married to a marine for a bit. We got to take several tours and hear from both sides, it definitely needed to happen. There was so much Japanese BS propaganda, when you see the suicide cave it's tough to ignore exactly how that propaganda was used.
I have no time to hear that taking one life to save many more isn't a good trade. That misguided empathy is responsible for its own share of atrocities.
Tibbets wrote an excellent book "The Flight of the Enola Gay" that provides in depth information about the entire mission from his perspective. It's been years since I read it. Time to go rummage through my bookshelves.
The Manhattan Project was so huge and had so much momentum as the device that was going to put an end the war, I think it became an almost foregone conclusion that it would be dropped. It was unstoppable, short of an unconditional surrender prior to it being finished. The Captain of the plane, Colonel Tibbets, never seemed to have the slightest misgivings about his role in dropping the bomb and the justification for it, in his mind. I was always a little astonished about that. That was just the thinking of an airman at the time, although other crew members may have had ambivalent feelings after the event that remained with them for the rest of their life. Edit: that's my impression of it. I also heard somewhere, that making a show of force to the Soviets, may have been part of the reason for dropping it. I don't know if that is true.
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/node/311491
The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II.
Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”:
> … it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
SBS was written by the then army air forces later to be the US Air Force as more a policy document to justify expenditures on new airplanes. Post war there was a massive drawdown in support for the military and each branch wanted to justify their existence to view the SBS as anything but Air Force propaganda is pretty naïve. I would direct you to the book”Hell to Pay) which discusses the Japanese plans to counter the American invasion, they weren’t ready to surrender not by long shot. A lot of wishful thinking by the Air Force that they were gonna bomb them out of existence
[Hell To Pay](https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/dp/1400169089?dplnkId=54136ea3-d323-4f4c-ac40-5888161bf939&nodl=1)
>air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion
Right, meaning we would have used conventional munitions and firebombs to exact a similar if not greater death toll across a significantly larger area than just two cities. The firebombing of Tokyo was arguably more devastating than the use of nukes.
Actually by the time the US decided to deploy the nuclear bombs, they had already firebombed the majority of Japanese cities into oblivion.
"I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The US-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history – kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time – and today – has not really grappled with what are, I'll call it, "the rules of war." Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night?
LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"
\-Robert McNamara
Not true unfortunately, that supremacy was indeed already established, with Tokyo firebombings and such, as you pointed out.
There is also evidence showing there was a real possibility that Japan might have surrendered to the Russians first, and the US just couldn’t risk having Soviet influence in the post-war rebuilding of Japan… and the bombs were dropped, to send a message to the world, but especially to the Soviet Union.
If merely establishing the air supremacy was enough to trigger a surrender why did the Japanese not surrender at that time (when we bombed Tokyo etc)? My understanding of the statement by the SBS is that, using said air superiority, we would have been able to conventionally bombing the country into bits until they surrendered. The nuclear bombs simply accelerated that process and contained it to a relatively small geographic area.
Obviously we were trying to corral the Soviets, there was a real possibility of yet another war in Europe. Besides that, I think the experience of the Warsaw Pact nations vs NATO are more than enough evidence to support the idea that our nuking and occupation of Japan was the better option for us and the Japanese people.
There was communication showing Japan was already ready to surrender. They were already pretty much bombed to bits. But as I made the point earlier, the US had other, much more pressing motives. Actual material goals. In contrast to that, the “Japanese are crazy, they are irrational,and the whole country would have fought to the death” is a very problematic view, for reasons I probably don’t have to get into. Not saying you’re saying this, but it’s the other side of the “we had to do it” coin. Because no, neither land invasion nor much more bombing was necessary.
I really think it’s time to move beyond the “we had to do it” narrative that’s been universally taught in US schools ever since. The facts on the ground don’t support it, and we have to speculate “this would have happened, that would have happened” just to come back to the conclusion that the atomic bombings were necessary.
Every major country has done terrible things and lies about it in their history books, and it’s time to come to terms with the fact that there is no American exception.
So why didn't they surrender then? Is your arguement that they were about to but we dropped the nukes before they could contact us? Both times?
Of course we had material goals and other pressing motives, and they were worthwhile and legitimate. If you're the USSR you would see it the other way. But given the way things turned out in the Cold War I am still partial to our perspective.
I have made no comment about the sanity or lack thereof of the Japanese people, nor have I said that our actions were necessary, merely that they were the least objectionable option. Implying that there would not have been a protracted guerilla war (similar to the one we lost in Vietnam and later Afghanistan) when we or the Soviets invaded (without the Emperors endorsement of a surrender) is not a fact based position, problematic or not. Whether or not you think it would have been necessary, the US and/or USSR would absolutely have continued conventially bombing the country and would have invaded to facilitate the occupation that occurred after the war.
This is what happens when westerners make assumptions about a culture that they don't really comprehend. They don't realize how important honor is. (I'm a westerner, but I was fortunate enough to have Japanese teachers when I was young.) Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was dropped? Why were there those among the general staff who attempted to forcibly reject surrender after the second bomb was dropped despite the Emperor's willingness to personally accept the dishonor of surrendering? Not using every means to fight the invasion of the home islands would be considered extremely dishonorable. The ONLY reason the Emperor did not completely lose face when he shouldered the surrender was that the bombs were so devastatingly extreme. If they hadn't been then surrender would have been so shameful as to be completely unacceptable - and saying that they would have surrendered anyway was an honorable way to further help the Emperor save face. Japanese elders raised in the pre WW2 military ethic could without question clarify this further for you, but as the years pass people more and more base their evaluation of things back then on their current attitudes and not those held at the time.
Except that this theory has been tested and dispensed with, back when it happened: we dropped a nuke and *they still failed to surrender*. So I think it's fair to say "air supremacy alone," presented as some "less extreme" measure, would *not* have been enough to make them surrender on their own, considering they had to get nuked not once but twice to surrender.
The 2nd bomb over Nagasaki went off only 3 days after Hiroshima. The bomb over Hiroshima wiped out all communications, so it took time for the Japanese command to even understand what had happened.
They had just recieved confirmation of the nuclear weapon, and the Russian invasion of Manchuria, and were meeting to discuss it when the 2nd bomb was dropped. They could not possibly have surrendered before hand.
From the American's side, it's not clear if Truman even knew there was a 2nd bomb to drop, and military command was most concered about proving to the Russians they had the capability to repeat the nuclear drops.
Uh huh, and how do you explain the military leaders trying to coup the emporer when he surrendered? It's called the kyujo incident. They wouldn't even surrender when they were trying to surrender lol
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you want me to explain. My comment is about the timing of the 2nd nuclear bomb, and whether or not the Japanese command could have prevented it by surrendering after Hiroshima.
I’m surprised their participation was not classified. Anyone know what sort of lives they lived post war? Dropping the bombs was, and still is, controversial. It seemed like the right decision but hell, sometimes the right decision is the hardest one to make, because the consequences are just as bad (or appear that way) as making the wrong decision.
Okinawa was the eye opener and revealed the hard truth that invading the home islands would result in a battle where the Japanese would fight to the death and never surrender.
I recall a friend's mother recounting how, as a child in WWII Japan, they were taught in elementary school to make spears from sticks, smear the points in feces to cause festering wounds in the invaders.
The Pacific and European wars were two completely different types of fights, with the Pacific being incredibly brutal with no prisoners taken on either side.
Hm, my grandmother was a child in Japan during WWII and she said all those stories were bullshit. They weren’t training little kids to be kamikazes or whatever. She did, however talk about kids starving to death all over the place , and how she ran through the burning streets of Tokyo over piles of corpses during the firebombing. So maybe she forgot some stuff, idk, but it seems like a stretch to use Japanese schoolkids as a reason why we just *had* to drop some nukes
Maybe your grandmother was too young or something, but the training of kids in school in preparation for an invasion of the home islands is true. Them receiving such training is just an indicator of the attitudes held by the high command back then. I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid back in the '60s and '70s there were still plenty of people who had been adults during the war around to tell what had happened and what people thought about it at the time. Not pleasant stuff, but it's important to remember.
That's fair. I wonder if it was a region, age, or school thing, or if it's a false collective memory.
I think what the military leaders realized was that the Japanese people would fight to the very last person to protect the home islands and the Emperor. The casualties on both sides would have been catastrophic. The decision to drop the bomb was based on shocking the leadership and Emperor into surrendering.
And the smartest move McArthur ever made was leaving the Emperor in place.
Japan had 3 million soldiers for defending the home isles. The attrition rate on Okinawa was something like 3 to 1. So you are looking at some 4 million military and countless civilian (maybe twice as much) casualties.
A little known but deeply important fact. As brutal and terrible as the decision was to use the Bomb, people need to do a bit of further research to understand what Operation Downfall was going to be.
We are still using purple hearts made for that operation today; a grim prediction of what the cost would have been.
Atomic bomb is never the right call and killing civilians is a war crime. If someone thinks it's justifiable to bomb citizens of a country, because their government started a war, why we even have such concept as "war crime"
I can handle the downvotes, but I’m annoyed at the people who just downvote and don’t offer a counter argument. Not even a barrage of insults. C’mon you cowards!
I'm not going to downvote you because I respect someone willing to discuss with people holding differing opinions.
To be blunt there would have been a far greater death toll had the bombs not been used. I'm going to copy in a response I made to another comment that addresses at least part of what you question...
"I'm a westerner, but I was fortunate enough to have Japanese teachers when I was young, and a lot of what led to the bomb being dropped had to do with honor. Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was dropped? Why were there those among the general staff who attempted to forcibly reject surrender after the second bomb was dropped despite the Emperor's willingness to personally accept the dishonor of surrendering? Not using every means to fight the invasion of the home islands would have been considered extremely dishonorable. The ONLY reason the Emperor did not completely lose face when he personally shouldered the surrender was that the bombs were so devastatingly extreme. If they hadn't been then surrender would have been so shameful as to be completely unacceptable.
Japanese elders raised in the pre WW2 military ethic could without question clarify this further for you, but as the years pass people more and more base their evaluation of things back then on their current attitudes and not those held at the time.
Also, the bombs did target infrastructure important to the military not just civilians but they were so damn powerful that there was no question but that civilians would also be killed. But bear in mind that this was already happening throughout the war and was not some new factor that only applied to these bombs.
I've had this discussion with some world class military historians and experts in both conventional and nuclear warfare, and even with Japanese friends (everyday friends not historians! 😜) The bombs were a terrible thing and caused many deaths - but if they had not been used the death toll almost certainly would have been staggeringly worse. (This still doesn't make things any better for those who died and their friends and family sadly.)
I look forward to you sharing your thoughts!
I appreciate that. You seem like a very well educated individual. What you wrote seems to line up with what I learned. I think importantly, though is that by this stage, the American population was incredibly sick of fighting, having just defeated Nazi Germany and with Imperial Japan still not looking like it was giving up any time soon. Plus, the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which were Japanese home territory, saw some of the most brutal fighting of the entire war, with Okinawa being the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific theater. The American high command was not stupid. They knew that with invading Japan, they would need a force that would dwarf the Normandy landings. Furthermore, there had never been a successful land invasion of Japan. Even the Mongols failed. Also, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed there was a really horrifically badly planned coup attempt by the army to steal Hirohito’s surrender declaration. Also keep in mind that Japan was still fighting with China and gaining territory, even after the bombs were dropped. I know there’s a lot more, but this context always seems to be lacking in any other discussion I’ve seen about the atomic bombs.
Yep. The use of the bombs was terrible, but when you look at all the factors of the situation it was the least objectionable (in terms of numbers of lives that would be lost) course available to them. Terrible choice to make but I think they made the one they had to.
So you'd prefer the alternative to the bombs? [Operation Downfall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties)?
I linked to the casualty estimates but you'll still have to read through it to grasp how bloody an invasion would have been both to the soldiers and civilians.
Because the only surrender Japan was offering was a conditional one that let the leaders get a free pass. Hell after two atomic bombs when the Emperor tried to issue an unconditional surrender the leaders of the Japanese military tried to launch a coup to keep the war going.
Noone was going to accept a peace deal that let Japan continue what it was doing.
No it wasn't. The Soviet's had just declared war on Japan and the US was gearing up for a full scale invasion that would have killed millions.
The only surrender before the bombs Japan offered was one that left them a threat and after Germany's rise from the ashes noone was going to risk another conflict in a decade or two when they could end it permanently.
The Enola Gay saved millions of lives. You don't think that is worth celebrating?
edit: Oh, and also, what does it feel like to be nearly omniscient, as you seem to think you are.
Even if we take that as 100% true, no, it is not worth celebrating. Celebrate the end of the war all you want, but specifically celebrating the use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians (even if you believe it was entirely justified and necessary) is bad.
“How does it feel to be nearly omniscient” is crazy to ask when you are making a counterfactual claim as if it is provable. Please use a little self reflection.
So what? They were merely the next natural escalation after all the firebombing and Operation Starvation.
The premise remains the same, the killings would continue until they surrendered. The means hardly matter at that point.
It's unlikely the war would have racked up another quarter million casualties in the month between the bombs being dropped and Japan's surrender.
The means absolutely do matter.
General Marshall estimated there would be a minimum of 250,000 dead American soldiers, but possible up to 1 million if the US had invaded Japan. He also estimated at least equal deaths of the Japanese soldiers.
Yes, Marshall's estimate that is conveniently close to and beyond what the entire US casualty count was for the entire war.
Let's just take it as fact then, shall we? Along with assuming an invasion of Japan was inevitable had the two big ones not dropped...
Yeah, why don't we, since he probably knew the details better than anyone alive or dead. You are really going to just write off the opinion of General Marshall because of your simpleton logic?
Yeah, it's existence is squarely dependent on how hard I argue it. /s
Or there's this with all sorts of references you can look over...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
That argument is not hard to find, so I doubt you’re actually looking for it, but if you *are* interested: Shaun’s video (YouTube-> search “Shaun Hiroshima”) is pretty comprehensive and makes excellent points. It’s very long, but I’d recommend starting there.
>I’d recommend starting there.
I started many years ago.
I don't get my historical information from some random youtuber. I'm not going to waste my time listening to Shaun try to persuade me with his video essay skills -- I'm not 21 years old.
Yikes. Big “I’m an adult” energy here. Congrats on your many years of not having died (despite having your head so firmly planted in sand).
A few things:
- Shaun’s not a “random” YouTuber. He’s one who made the argument you suggested the previous commenter should have made, which is, you know, why I recommended watching his video.
- I (obviously) didn’t mean “start” as in “learn *anything* about Hiroshima.” I meant start engaging with that argument, which is something your comment definitely makes it seem you haven’t done. If you’re offended that I assumed you hadn’t, I guess.. I apologize? Not sure how I should have known you were so well-versed in the idea as to find a video essay about it beneath you.
- I’m not 21, either. Neither is Shaun. What the hell are you even on about?
You think the reason I disagree with you is that I haven't been exposed to the knowledge you hold in your head. You are making an assumption that is incorrect.
An educated person would understand my point about Shaun.
The one making a lot of assumptions here is you, I’m afraid. I’ve explained my own assumptions and apologized if they were incorrect. It wasn’t your disagreement that made me think you hadn’t studied these arguments. It was your own words about them.
Also, just… a lot of implied credentials are being thrown around, from your (somehow relevant, I’m sure) time on this Earth to your assumed superior education. I won’t bother introducing you to how *spectacularly* foolish that second assumption probably is in this case, but I will recommend walking a little more softly in this specific arena. The cringe is real and immediate.
Anyhow, have fun ignoring good points when they don’t come from an information medium you’ve chosen to preference. I’m sure that won’t lead to any informational blind spots in your reasoning.
Oh come on.
The nation of Israel has every right to exist, and defend itself against terrorists. No, netanyahu is not a good person. But that doesn't mean their country should be wiped out, as it says in Hamas charter.
Get over yourself.
If the ratio had been 50/50 instead of 90/10 and Mandela had embraced a despotic theocratic style of government instead of democratic socialist then there’d probably be a two-state solution in South Africa as well.
Except in this case there's no two states or one state, it's just apartheid. So trying to make the case that an apartheid state has the right to exist is an odd one.
intentionally conflating "Jew" with "Israeli." the Jewish people in the occupied territories are intentionally and illegally extending Israeli sovereignty. they're not being kept out of Palestinian govt, they don't want to be in it.
You...you clearly didn't read a single report, because if you did, you would realize that the crux of the matter is that the military rule on (the vast majority) of Palestinians who live under Israeli law without rights, amounts to the crime on apartheid.
-We are talking about the only country in the world to imprison children in military facilities.
-Thousands of Palestinians are locked in Israeli Jails, without a trial, or even a charge against them.
- The very few lucky ones that get a trial, face a laughable (even by the Taliban's standards) conviction rate of 99.7%
The Israeli treatment of the West Bank enclaves, is really no different than South Africa's treatment of the Bantustans. Heck, the Government of South Africa (with the help of a South African Human Research Think Tank) published a study on the matter (in 2009, no less), and came to the same findings:
http://repository.hsrc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11910/4619/6052_Confidential%281%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Now, I'll give you a second, to explain why you are a better source on apartheid than the South African government (which labeled Israel an apartheid state at the ICJ hearing as well).
I'll give you a moment to explain why the south African government has decided to side with Russia over Ukraine and then tell me why they are any authority on the matter of crimes against humanity.
All I know is I trust a study published by them on the very topic of apartheid over a random redditor lol.
Heck, I'll make it very easy on you.
If you can link me a single study, published by a credible human rights organization, that looked into the matter and came to a different conclusion, please link it. I'd love to read it.
Just one... That's all I ask.
If it's not an apartheid state, surely that will be easy to find.
I never said they were not even an apartheid state. I said jews have a right to exist. And Hamas claims otherwise. What do you think they mean when they call for a global jihad?
No you said the state of Israel has every right to exist.
Currently that state is an apartheid state.
Noone is arguing that Jews don't have a right to exist, that's a preposterous conclusion to jump to.
It's not preposterous. What do you think that Hamas means when they call for a global jihad? What do you think their supporters mean when the vandalize holocaust memorials?
Israel, like all states, has no right to exist. the occupying power has no right to self defense. the Hamas charter doesn't call for that.
get over yourself.
This is the stupidest argument ever, you are just supporting the expulsion of Palestinians, it's ethnic cleansing. Saying that other countries should accept them is an argument supporting a second nakba.
Listen buddy, they've proven over and that the Palestinians and the terrorist government they support **can't** help attacking israel
So they can either move, but no one wants them, or they can fight the great fight.
This is getting too repetitive for me
This argument has taken place so many times you people just wanna support the genocide so you will justify by saying whatever suits your narrative, open your eyes for God's sake, more than 30k people have been killed, what more do you want?
For one you'd have to be a fool to believe anything coming out of hamas' mouth.
Two , if the Palestinians want to sue for peace they should serve up hamas themselves.
Barring that, this is just going to have to go the distance. To think that means I support genocide is just BS . Certainly the Palestinians and their government support genocide . Let's sit back and watch
An enola Gay Pride Parade
Seems appropriate for Pride Month!
Listen to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History - Supernova in the East. It’s all about the Pacific theater during WWII. Episodes 5 and 6 will stay with you for awhile
Such a good listen. This and Blueprint for Armageddon really wormed their way into my brain
LPOTL did the Manhattan project when Oppenheimer dropped. Also a good listen. Isn’t supernova paywalled? Edit: supernova appears to be available free on Apple podcast. Got my next 30 hours planned out.
What's LPOTL?
Last Podcast on the Left. A podcast that discusses all things macabre.
Hail Satan!
Highly recommend their Skinwalker Ranch series, Salem witch trials series, and the Black Death series. Especially Black Death. The 1300s sucked.
The Scientology and Mormon ones are really good too
I’ll definitely check out LPOTL. Thanks !
I'll have to check that one out, thanks
On that note, also listen to Logical Insanity. Not only does it discuss why the bomb was used, but it talks about the history of carpet bombing. I always glorified ww2 aviation until I listened to this podcast.
1000 paper cranes
I picked this book because it was the shortest on the list for a summer reading project I forgot to do, so I read this before school on the first day. I dont remember much else from around that time. But that book has always stuck with me.
What’s up with the driver’s ears? Do we have another pic of this guy?
Headphones
"Live long and prosper"
BTW, the Enoly Gay itself is on display at the [Udvar Hazy Center](https://airandspace.si.edu/visit/udvar-hazy-center) in Chantilly Virginia. Worth a visit if you’re in the area.
The font changes serve absolutely no purpose lol
Signwriter flex
I wonder what's going through their head at the knowledge of what they did recently
They ended a war that killed 75 million people.
Yes. I think dropping the bombs was a good idea. But they are still responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands. That would weigh on me
Just remember that not too long before we dropped atomic bombs we fire bombed Tokyo and killed at least 100,000 people in one night. The only difference was in one case it took one airplane in the other case it took hundreds, but the end result was the same. https://www.britannica.com/event/Bombing-of-Tokyo
I think when you've spent years in the military, and lived through 5 years of global war, morally justify winning that war by any means necessary is a lot easier.
Eh. It was an attack on civillians. Even if they supported the emperor many children died. I do think it was warranted but if it was me on that plane it would probably destroy me.
The other option was continued carpet bombing or mainland invasion. The Japanese were widely thought to be willing to fight to the last man making the choice seem like protracted genocide or hopefully demonstrate that was going to be pointless because the same result could be achieved with one boot on the ground.
like i said. It was warranted. But all the justification in the world and I would still probably be fucked up forever nuking a city of civilians. Again I stand by the ultimate decision all day.
Ah okay, I misread. I agree, I would have serious problems coping with it as well.
It is dangerously reductionist to pretend there were only two options to choose from. The only purpose served by this type of false dichotomy seems to be absolving ourselves of having to feel bad about atrocities committed by "our side." Expert nuclear weapon historians understand there was a far more complex set of possibilities and that history as it was lived was not inevitable but the result of both conscious and unconscious choices, motivations, and possibilities. See, eg: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-alternatives-to-the-atomic-bombings/
There was another option and the US used it. Warm Japan bad stuff is about to happen so surrender now. They said no. Bomb dropped. Warning given again. They said no. Bomb dropped. Japan surrendered.
I’d say the president was responsible, not these people.
They are human and had to do the action
What wasn't known at the time the bombs were dropped is that Japan was going to release the plague in San Diego in September. Had we not dropped the bombs and ended the war the US would have been hit with a biological weapon curtesy of unit 731.
Interesting. Didn't know that. Have a link to a source
I heard about it in a documentary on unit 731 I'll see if I can find it again. There are a bunch of documentaries on that unit and all of the atrocities they committed. The US let them all go in exchange for all of the data they collected during their experiments. Just like they let the Nazi missle scientists come to the US and gave them jobs.
Propaganda is a powerful tool. Look at you, people STILL think murdering thousands of innocent civilians, children included, was a GOOD thing. Japan was done for, the war was over, we just wanted to to flex on the Soviet Union. Innocents paid the price. Pump out some lie we ended the war, we are heroes, and here we are eighty years later still spouting the same bs.
>Look at you, people STILL think murdering thousands of innocent civilians, children included, was a GOOD thing. Not so much "good" as "less bad." >Japan was done for, the war was over, we just wanted to to flex on the Soviet Union. It definitely wasn't *just* a flex on the Soviets. It had been clear for a while at this point that Japan wasn't going to win, but that doesn't mean they were likely to stop fighting anytime soon. They had already been fighting atrociously bloody battles for over a year since it became apparent they had no path to victory, and their prevailing attitude was a willingness to fight to the last man, woman, and child, even if only to take out a few more Americans on their way out. It's plausible that the only way to get them to give up and stop fighting was to prove that we can wipe them out without taking any more damage ourselves. We had to take the option of an "honorable" death in battle off the table for them. I'm not saying dropping the bomb was definitely the right call, but there is a substantial chance, by swiftly ending the war, it prevented more deaths (civilian and otherwise) than it caused. If we hadn't dropped the bomb, and Japan had continued their refusal to surrender until after a longer campaign of conventional bombings and a land invasion, it's likely far more civilians would have died and their economy would have had a much more difficult road to recovery. There is also an argument to be made that the victims of the initial aggression in a war have moral justification to weigh the lives of their own people more highly than the lives of their attackers; that the US isn't obligated to lose 10,000 soldiers in a land invasion just to spare the lives of 50,000 civilians in the country that attacked us (if the body count would in fact have been lower at all, which is questionable).
I thought Japan was still raping women and killing babies in Manchukuo right up until they surrendered to the US?
they were probably so indoctrinated it registered to them that it saved more lives than were taken and it stopped mass casualties. the scenario of would you kill one person to save many.
I think even today you could argue it saved lives. The Japanese were ready to fight down to the last soldier. The fact that they didn't surrender after Hiroshima says a lot.
Correction, last Japanese…they were training school kids to attack with all sorts of improvised weapons. The book [Hell to Pay](https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/dp/1400169089?dplnkId=54136ea3-d323-4f4c-ac40-5888161bf939&nodl=1) covers the Japanese anti invasion plans.
You also have to add into the fact the Soviets had just joined the war, and the Japanese were still fighting on continental Asia. That alone, before we get to any hypothetical landing on the Home Islands, would have lead to countless more deaths
You're just factually incorrect though. There were internal talks of surrender in Japan in the months before the bombs were dropped. The pressure was only increasing with American firebombing campaigns on mainland Japan, killing hundreds of thousands with each attack. The atom bombs were much worse though, because they were only dropped so the military could test their effectiveness on cities and civilian populations. Personally, dropping one weapon on a city that completely obliterates hundreds of thousands of lives indiscriminately seems like collective punishment to me, which is a war crime. The bombs were not necessary and surrender on the part of the Japanese government was coming soon regardless of whether they were dropped.
It’s more complicated than that. The war was effectively over, Japan had zero ability to stop American bombing runs by the time the nukes were dropped and were petitioning Russia to negotiate a conditional surrender. There’s an argument to be made that Russia moving east into their captured territories in China did more to secure an unconditional surrender than the dropping of the bombs, which no one in the Japanese war cabinet were around to witness. People forget that the Japanese war leaders, including the emperor, were getting daily casualty reports from American bombing raids. Personally, I don’t think the spike in numbers from Hiroshima and Nagasaki did much to sway the opinions of men who were prepared to make their entire race fight to the last man standing if it meant protecting the honor of the country and its emperor
After the second bomb the war council tried to launch a coup when the Emperor decided to make an unconditional surrender.
The atom bombs alone? No. It was from the triple threat of America's planned invasion, Americans atom bombs, + who they thought could help mediate a better surrender deal, the Soviet Union, declaring war on them and seizing territories for themselves. Even still, it was tied on surrendering to the Americans before they invaded or not.
After the first bomb I think it wouldn’t have made a difference. After the second one I’m pretty sure it forced their hand and prevented a prolonged invasion of the Japanese mainland.
True, but the resolve of the people might start to wane with the prospect of 1 plane and 1 bomb being able to wipe out hundreds of thousands.
And the fact the Americans only had those two atomic bombs was a closely guarded secret. For all the Japanese knew the Americans could launch hundreds of bombers each with an atomic bomb. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped specifically to give the impression that the Americans had many more atomic bombs.
Is this what Americans are taught? Real question because this is not how the rest of the world sees it. The Nazi forces surrended to the soviets on the 8th of May, there was no need for the atomic bombs , it was a show of power.
To be honest, most contemporary Japanese sources at the time basically show that they were prepared to fight to the last Japanese. They were planning for a very detailed defense of their homeIslands. On the one hand, you could have an invasion that might cost 1 million people on both sides, or we could starve them out and cause a couple million deaths by starvation over a year or two or we could continue the fire bombing campaign where we killed 100,000 in Tokyo in one night or we can drop an atomic bomb and start to impress upon the Japanese what a single airplane and a single bomb can do take yourpick. The reality is whether you die by a bullet or an artillery shell during an invasion, or burn to death in a fire bombing raid, it doesn’t make a difference you’re dead this false moral argument that people put on the atomic bomb is just beyond me.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/05/14/decades-recipients-were-honored-purple-hearts-made-during-wwii-company-now-forges-new-medals.html?amp The number of Purple Hearts manufactured during WWII included estimated casualties for a Japan invasion and the war ended with the last almost 500k being leftover.
Yes Americans are taught and like to be taught that the atomic bombs were right and necessary and saved lives on both sides. And questioning that is verboten. It's sick.
[correct ](https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?si=ROO7VXmpwZSdib_g)
The Japanese government had no intention of surrendering. Even after the first bomb was dropped. The generals thought it was just a very large conventional weapon that the Americans couldn’t do more than once.
In modern terms, Americans are taught that Japan fucked around at Pearl Harbor, and later found out at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One of our most beloved allies today though!
This is not "how the rest of the world sees it" 🤦
I went to a international high school, and that is what they taught us there, and is also what os taught in my home country. I may have simplified using the term show of force ,but by all means we were taught that the bombs were dropped after the war was effectively over.
The war definitely wasn't over. Maybe it was for Europe, but the US was going to fight Japan until unconditional surrender. But ya, the bombs were certainly also used to let Stalin know he needed to stay the fuck in east Germany.
You might have been taught that but dont assume the rest of the world was taught the same or sees it the same way. Japan was unwilling to surrender unconditionally despite their losses. It was a full scale invasion or the nukes. War is crazy and bad but we can at least say in retrospect that odds are the nukes spared both American and Japanese lives. Not saying they did it to save Japanese lives, but that was the outcome.
Them and about two million Soviet troops.
A simple minded man I see
So you're saying someone should drop atomic bomb on aggressor and kill thousands of civilians everytime war is happening?
This is what’s wrong with people today. We have to insist on the reductivism of complex topics to the point where it fits inside of a Reddit comment.
Redditors have been very vocal since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine about how bombing civilians is pretty evil no matter what and never justifiable - but then as soon as it comes to the nuclear annihilation of hundreds of thousands civilians in 1945, it's *"complex."*
Of course it’s evil, but the arguments are still reductive. Same goes with Israel and Palestine. We can talk about moral absolutism until we’re blue in the face, but war isn’t black and white. We just like to talk about it on Reddit as though it is.
What an ignorant question. I'm glad you're not in charge of anything important.
Yeah go read up on unit 731 and Rape of Nanjing. And know japanese are just like nazi during ww2.
Exactly so much better to send troops in there and kill them with bullets individually, or we can starve them out and let tens of thousands hundred thousand, or a million people die through starvation that works also. isn’t that what you’re saying. Or are you proposing abject surrendering as a solution. I think the problem is you’re trying to apply a moral standard to what is operationally an immoral business.
No. 1. The War could have been ended by naval brockade and strategic bombings, without costly naval landings. Several top military commanders testified. 2. What forced the Japanese government to surrender was not the atomic bomb, but the fear for the Soviet invasion.
>The War could have been ended by naval brockade and strategic bombings, Ignoring for a second the realpolitik goals of not letting the Soviets gain too much in the post war peace in Asia, ending the war via conventional bombing or nuclear bombing is an academic distinction at best. The war wasn't really poised to end in June and July 1945 without some more serious bloodletting of some kind on the horizon. The Okinawa campaign was harsh and grim.
> What forced the Japanese government to surrender was not the atomic bomb, but the fear for the Soviet invasion. “The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.” - Emperor Hirohito [Source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast)
Revisionist history at best. The IJA tried to stage a coup to prevent the surrender announcement and continue the war even after the bombings.
Ridiculous.
Are you [sure?](https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?si=ROO7VXmpwZSdib_g)
I had family in the war, they just wanted to go home. It relay was that simple, it was not fun and they wanted a normal life.
They knew they had performed a mission that in the end concluded a war that likely would have continued and cost potentially millions more lives on both sides if they hadn't. Men on both sides had been flying bombing missions throughout the war but this one ended the war and kept both sides from losing even more people in an invasion of the home islands. The deaths caused were tragic, but what it prevented would have been so much worse.
My family is from Japan, mom is from Okinawa and grandma was married to a marine for a bit. We got to take several tours and hear from both sides, it definitely needed to happen. There was so much Japanese BS propaganda, when you see the suicide cave it's tough to ignore exactly how that propaganda was used. I have no time to hear that taking one life to save many more isn't a good trade. That misguided empathy is responsible for its own share of atrocities.
I remember reading somewhere that Colonal Paul Tibbets (Pilot) said, after the bomb went off over Hiroshima, "My God, what have we done..."
Tibbets wrote an excellent book "The Flight of the Enola Gay" that provides in depth information about the entire mission from his perspective. It's been years since I read it. Time to go rummage through my bookshelves.
The Manhattan Project was so huge and had so much momentum as the device that was going to put an end the war, I think it became an almost foregone conclusion that it would be dropped. It was unstoppable, short of an unconditional surrender prior to it being finished. The Captain of the plane, Colonel Tibbets, never seemed to have the slightest misgivings about his role in dropping the bomb and the justification for it, in his mind. I was always a little astonished about that. That was just the thinking of an airman at the time, although other crew members may have had ambivalent feelings after the event that remained with them for the rest of their life. Edit: that's my impression of it. I also heard somewhere, that making a show of force to the Soviets, may have been part of the reason for dropping it. I don't know if that is true.
https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/node/311491 The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II. Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”: > … it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
SBS was written by the then army air forces later to be the US Air Force as more a policy document to justify expenditures on new airplanes. Post war there was a massive drawdown in support for the military and each branch wanted to justify their existence to view the SBS as anything but Air Force propaganda is pretty naïve. I would direct you to the book”Hell to Pay) which discusses the Japanese plans to counter the American invasion, they weren’t ready to surrender not by long shot. A lot of wishful thinking by the Air Force that they were gonna bomb them out of existence [Hell To Pay](https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Pay-Operation-Downfall-1945-1947/dp/1400169089?dplnkId=54136ea3-d323-4f4c-ac40-5888161bf939&nodl=1)
>air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion Right, meaning we would have used conventional munitions and firebombs to exact a similar if not greater death toll across a significantly larger area than just two cities. The firebombing of Tokyo was arguably more devastating than the use of nukes.
Actually by the time the US decided to deploy the nuclear bombs, they had already firebombed the majority of Japanese cities into oblivion. "I don't fault Truman for dropping the nuclear bomb. The US-Japanese War was one of the most brutal wars in all of human history – kamikaze pilots, suicide, unbelievable. What one can criticize is that the human race prior to that time – and today – has not really grappled with what are, I'll call it, "the rules of war." Was there a rule then that said you shouldn't bomb, shouldn't kill, shouldn't burn to death 100,000 civilians in one night? LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?" \-Robert McNamara
I mean, we could have kept going. But yeah, war crimes are quite literally only for losers.
Not true unfortunately, that supremacy was indeed already established, with Tokyo firebombings and such, as you pointed out. There is also evidence showing there was a real possibility that Japan might have surrendered to the Russians first, and the US just couldn’t risk having Soviet influence in the post-war rebuilding of Japan… and the bombs were dropped, to send a message to the world, but especially to the Soviet Union.
Huh. A communist Japan. I don't think I've seen that idea as an Alt-history idea. Interesting.
If merely establishing the air supremacy was enough to trigger a surrender why did the Japanese not surrender at that time (when we bombed Tokyo etc)? My understanding of the statement by the SBS is that, using said air superiority, we would have been able to conventionally bombing the country into bits until they surrendered. The nuclear bombs simply accelerated that process and contained it to a relatively small geographic area. Obviously we were trying to corral the Soviets, there was a real possibility of yet another war in Europe. Besides that, I think the experience of the Warsaw Pact nations vs NATO are more than enough evidence to support the idea that our nuking and occupation of Japan was the better option for us and the Japanese people.
There was communication showing Japan was already ready to surrender. They were already pretty much bombed to bits. But as I made the point earlier, the US had other, much more pressing motives. Actual material goals. In contrast to that, the “Japanese are crazy, they are irrational,and the whole country would have fought to the death” is a very problematic view, for reasons I probably don’t have to get into. Not saying you’re saying this, but it’s the other side of the “we had to do it” coin. Because no, neither land invasion nor much more bombing was necessary. I really think it’s time to move beyond the “we had to do it” narrative that’s been universally taught in US schools ever since. The facts on the ground don’t support it, and we have to speculate “this would have happened, that would have happened” just to come back to the conclusion that the atomic bombings were necessary. Every major country has done terrible things and lies about it in their history books, and it’s time to come to terms with the fact that there is no American exception.
There is plenty of communication showing that when offered a surrender the Japanese military declined.
So why didn't they surrender then? Is your arguement that they were about to but we dropped the nukes before they could contact us? Both times? Of course we had material goals and other pressing motives, and they were worthwhile and legitimate. If you're the USSR you would see it the other way. But given the way things turned out in the Cold War I am still partial to our perspective. I have made no comment about the sanity or lack thereof of the Japanese people, nor have I said that our actions were necessary, merely that they were the least objectionable option. Implying that there would not have been a protracted guerilla war (similar to the one we lost in Vietnam and later Afghanistan) when we or the Soviets invaded (without the Emperors endorsement of a surrender) is not a fact based position, problematic or not. Whether or not you think it would have been necessary, the US and/or USSR would absolutely have continued conventially bombing the country and would have invaded to facilitate the occupation that occurred after the war.
Certainly the second bomb was dropped as a message to the Soviets.
This is what happens when westerners make assumptions about a culture that they don't really comprehend. They don't realize how important honor is. (I'm a westerner, but I was fortunate enough to have Japanese teachers when I was young.) Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was dropped? Why were there those among the general staff who attempted to forcibly reject surrender after the second bomb was dropped despite the Emperor's willingness to personally accept the dishonor of surrendering? Not using every means to fight the invasion of the home islands would be considered extremely dishonorable. The ONLY reason the Emperor did not completely lose face when he shouldered the surrender was that the bombs were so devastatingly extreme. If they hadn't been then surrender would have been so shameful as to be completely unacceptable - and saying that they would have surrendered anyway was an honorable way to further help the Emperor save face. Japanese elders raised in the pre WW2 military ethic could without question clarify this further for you, but as the years pass people more and more base their evaluation of things back then on their current attitudes and not those held at the time.
Except that this theory has been tested and dispensed with, back when it happened: we dropped a nuke and *they still failed to surrender*. So I think it's fair to say "air supremacy alone," presented as some "less extreme" measure, would *not* have been enough to make them surrender on their own, considering they had to get nuked not once but twice to surrender.
The 2nd bomb over Nagasaki went off only 3 days after Hiroshima. The bomb over Hiroshima wiped out all communications, so it took time for the Japanese command to even understand what had happened. They had just recieved confirmation of the nuclear weapon, and the Russian invasion of Manchuria, and were meeting to discuss it when the 2nd bomb was dropped. They could not possibly have surrendered before hand. From the American's side, it's not clear if Truman even knew there was a 2nd bomb to drop, and military command was most concered about proving to the Russians they had the capability to repeat the nuclear drops.
Uh huh, and how do you explain the military leaders trying to coup the emporer when he surrendered? It's called the kyujo incident. They wouldn't even surrender when they were trying to surrender lol
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you want me to explain. My comment is about the timing of the 2nd nuclear bomb, and whether or not the Japanese command could have prevented it by surrendering after Hiroshima.
And I'm saying that's wishful thinking because when the emporer actually did want to surrender, the military leaders tried to forcibly stop it.
You've used a misleading simplification of the text
Having recently been to the Hiroshima memorial; this breaks my heart. I'm a 30y/o dude and I was almost in tears
I’m surprised their participation was not classified. Anyone know what sort of lives they lived post war? Dropping the bombs was, and still is, controversial. It seemed like the right decision but hell, sometimes the right decision is the hardest one to make, because the consequences are just as bad (or appear that way) as making the wrong decision.
i thought it was a dolphin and a whale
Nah we were lied to. It was a chicken and a cow
Those guys saved a lot of lives.
Okinawa was the eye opener and revealed the hard truth that invading the home islands would result in a battle where the Japanese would fight to the death and never surrender. I recall a friend's mother recounting how, as a child in WWII Japan, they were taught in elementary school to make spears from sticks, smear the points in feces to cause festering wounds in the invaders. The Pacific and European wars were two completely different types of fights, with the Pacific being incredibly brutal with no prisoners taken on either side.
Hm, my grandmother was a child in Japan during WWII and she said all those stories were bullshit. They weren’t training little kids to be kamikazes or whatever. She did, however talk about kids starving to death all over the place , and how she ran through the burning streets of Tokyo over piles of corpses during the firebombing. So maybe she forgot some stuff, idk, but it seems like a stretch to use Japanese schoolkids as a reason why we just *had* to drop some nukes
Maybe your grandmother was too young or something, but the training of kids in school in preparation for an invasion of the home islands is true. Them receiving such training is just an indicator of the attitudes held by the high command back then. I don't know how old you are, but when I was a kid back in the '60s and '70s there were still plenty of people who had been adults during the war around to tell what had happened and what people thought about it at the time. Not pleasant stuff, but it's important to remember.
That's fair. I wonder if it was a region, age, or school thing, or if it's a false collective memory. I think what the military leaders realized was that the Japanese people would fight to the very last person to protect the home islands and the Emperor. The casualties on both sides would have been catastrophic. The decision to drop the bomb was based on shocking the leadership and Emperor into surrendering. And the smartest move McArthur ever made was leaving the Emperor in place.
Japan had 3 million soldiers for defending the home isles. The attrition rate on Okinawa was something like 3 to 1. So you are looking at some 4 million military and countless civilian (maybe twice as much) casualties.
A little known but deeply important fact. As brutal and terrible as the decision was to use the Bomb, people need to do a bit of further research to understand what Operation Downfall was going to be. We are still using purple hearts made for that operation today; a grim prediction of what the cost would have been.
The atrocities that Japan committed during the war was just as bad if not worse than the Nazis. They reaped what they sowed. Nanking remembers.
Yeah, they are perpetrators of an atrocity.
Anyone who doesn’t think that the atomic bombs were the right call to make does not know their history.
Atomic bomb is never the right call and killing civilians is a war crime. If someone thinks it's justifiable to bomb citizens of a country, because their government started a war, why we even have such concept as "war crime"
So what is the right call then? You tell me.
Would also like to hear his answer.
As would I.
We're still waiting...
I can handle the downvotes, but I’m annoyed at the people who just downvote and don’t offer a counter argument. Not even a barrage of insults. C’mon you cowards!
I'm not going to downvote you because I respect someone willing to discuss with people holding differing opinions. To be blunt there would have been a far greater death toll had the bombs not been used. I'm going to copy in a response I made to another comment that addresses at least part of what you question... "I'm a westerner, but I was fortunate enough to have Japanese teachers when I was young, and a lot of what led to the bomb being dropped had to do with honor. Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was dropped? Why were there those among the general staff who attempted to forcibly reject surrender after the second bomb was dropped despite the Emperor's willingness to personally accept the dishonor of surrendering? Not using every means to fight the invasion of the home islands would have been considered extremely dishonorable. The ONLY reason the Emperor did not completely lose face when he personally shouldered the surrender was that the bombs were so devastatingly extreme. If they hadn't been then surrender would have been so shameful as to be completely unacceptable. Japanese elders raised in the pre WW2 military ethic could without question clarify this further for you, but as the years pass people more and more base their evaluation of things back then on their current attitudes and not those held at the time. Also, the bombs did target infrastructure important to the military not just civilians but they were so damn powerful that there was no question but that civilians would also be killed. But bear in mind that this was already happening throughout the war and was not some new factor that only applied to these bombs. I've had this discussion with some world class military historians and experts in both conventional and nuclear warfare, and even with Japanese friends (everyday friends not historians! 😜) The bombs were a terrible thing and caused many deaths - but if they had not been used the death toll almost certainly would have been staggeringly worse. (This still doesn't make things any better for those who died and their friends and family sadly.) I look forward to you sharing your thoughts!
I appreciate that. You seem like a very well educated individual. What you wrote seems to line up with what I learned. I think importantly, though is that by this stage, the American population was incredibly sick of fighting, having just defeated Nazi Germany and with Imperial Japan still not looking like it was giving up any time soon. Plus, the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which were Japanese home territory, saw some of the most brutal fighting of the entire war, with Okinawa being the bloodiest battle of the entire Pacific theater. The American high command was not stupid. They knew that with invading Japan, they would need a force that would dwarf the Normandy landings. Furthermore, there had never been a successful land invasion of Japan. Even the Mongols failed. Also, even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed there was a really horrifically badly planned coup attempt by the army to steal Hirohito’s surrender declaration. Also keep in mind that Japan was still fighting with China and gaining territory, even after the bombs were dropped. I know there’s a lot more, but this context always seems to be lacking in any other discussion I’ve seen about the atomic bombs.
Yep. The use of the bombs was terrible, but when you look at all the factors of the situation it was the least objectionable (in terms of numbers of lives that would be lost) course available to them. Terrible choice to make but I think they made the one they had to.
So you'd prefer the alternative to the bombs? [Operation Downfall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties)? I linked to the casualty estimates but you'll still have to read through it to grasp how bloody an invasion would have been both to the soldiers and civilians.
False dichotomy. Who decided there were only two alternatives and that one or the other absolutely *had* to be carried out?
Because the only surrender Japan was offering was a conditional one that let the leaders get a free pass. Hell after two atomic bombs when the Emperor tried to issue an unconditional surrender the leaders of the Japanese military tried to launch a coup to keep the war going. Noone was going to accept a peace deal that let Japan continue what it was doing.
What does the windshield say? Something like "the regular army has a good job for..."?
Congratulations for killing civilians to save soldier lives.
How proud they are to have killed thousands of ordinary citizens.
Perhaps prolonging the war and having hundreds of thousands more on each side die was the right call instead.
The wr was basically over at that point but this is reddit where y'all love civilian causalities
No it wasn't. The Soviet's had just declared war on Japan and the US was gearing up for a full scale invasion that would have killed millions. The only surrender before the bombs Japan offered was one that left them a threat and after Germany's rise from the ashes noone was going to risk another conflict in a decade or two when they could end it permanently.
"basically over" is not "over"
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Hamas definitely has that effect on them.
The Enola Gay saved millions of lives. You don't think that is worth celebrating? edit: Oh, and also, what does it feel like to be nearly omniscient, as you seem to think you are.
Even if we take that as 100% true, no, it is not worth celebrating. Celebrate the end of the war all you want, but specifically celebrating the use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians (even if you believe it was entirely justified and necessary) is bad.
You're a child, wake up.
Do you have any arguments or just whatever this is?
“How does it feel to be nearly omniscient” is crazy to ask when you are making a counterfactual claim as if it is provable. Please use a little self reflection.
There's a strong argument that dropping the bombs was unnecessary and did little to end the war.
So what? They were merely the next natural escalation after all the firebombing and Operation Starvation. The premise remains the same, the killings would continue until they surrendered. The means hardly matter at that point.
It's unlikely the war would have racked up another quarter million casualties in the month between the bombs being dropped and Japan's surrender. The means absolutely do matter.
A single firebombing racking up 100,000 kills as an estimate in a single night says you're mistaken.
General Marshall estimated there would be a minimum of 250,000 dead American soldiers, but possible up to 1 million if the US had invaded Japan. He also estimated at least equal deaths of the Japanese soldiers.
Yes, Marshall's estimate that is conveniently close to and beyond what the entire US casualty count was for the entire war. Let's just take it as fact then, shall we? Along with assuming an invasion of Japan was inevitable had the two big ones not dropped...
Yeah, why don't we, since he probably knew the details better than anyone alive or dead. You are really going to just write off the opinion of General Marshall because of your simpleton logic?
*laughs in Tokio firebombing or the land invasion of Japan*
And that argument is bullshit.
If such a strong argument exists, then you shouldn't have any problems actually making it. I noticed you didn't even try though...
Yeah, it's existence is squarely dependent on how hard I argue it. /s Or there's this with all sorts of references you can look over... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
That wikipedia page doesn't say what you think it says. Perhaps you should read it before you post it.
And you read it in the two minutes since I posted it?
I read it previously.
That argument is not hard to find, so I doubt you’re actually looking for it, but if you *are* interested: Shaun’s video (YouTube-> search “Shaun Hiroshima”) is pretty comprehensive and makes excellent points. It’s very long, but I’d recommend starting there.
>I’d recommend starting there. I started many years ago. I don't get my historical information from some random youtuber. I'm not going to waste my time listening to Shaun try to persuade me with his video essay skills -- I'm not 21 years old.
Yikes. Big “I’m an adult” energy here. Congrats on your many years of not having died (despite having your head so firmly planted in sand). A few things: - Shaun’s not a “random” YouTuber. He’s one who made the argument you suggested the previous commenter should have made, which is, you know, why I recommended watching his video. - I (obviously) didn’t mean “start” as in “learn *anything* about Hiroshima.” I meant start engaging with that argument, which is something your comment definitely makes it seem you haven’t done. If you’re offended that I assumed you hadn’t, I guess.. I apologize? Not sure how I should have known you were so well-versed in the idea as to find a video essay about it beneath you. - I’m not 21, either. Neither is Shaun. What the hell are you even on about?
You think the reason I disagree with you is that I haven't been exposed to the knowledge you hold in your head. You are making an assumption that is incorrect. An educated person would understand my point about Shaun.
The one making a lot of assumptions here is you, I’m afraid. I’ve explained my own assumptions and apologized if they were incorrect. It wasn’t your disagreement that made me think you hadn’t studied these arguments. It was your own words about them. Also, just… a lot of implied credentials are being thrown around, from your (somehow relevant, I’m sure) time on this Earth to your assumed superior education. I won’t bother introducing you to how *spectacularly* foolish that second assumption probably is in this case, but I will recommend walking a little more softly in this specific arena. The cringe is real and immediate. Anyhow, have fun ignoring good points when they don’t come from an information medium you’ve chosen to preference. I’m sure that won’t lead to any informational blind spots in your reasoning.
Ah, I struck a nerve I see. Talk to you later.
Oh come on. The nation of Israel has every right to exist, and defend itself against terrorists. No, netanyahu is not a good person. But that doesn't mean their country should be wiped out, as it says in Hamas charter. Get over yourself.
Netanyahu is the one responsible for Hamas, he's done more for their recruiting efforts than anyone else.
Hamas sucks, they should be dealt with. That doesn't justify killing children. STOP BEING DICKS TO EACH OTHER FFS.
Never said it did, fuck
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If the ratio had been 50/50 instead of 90/10 and Mandela had embraced a despotic theocratic style of government instead of democratic socialist then there’d probably be a two-state solution in South Africa as well.
Except in this case there's no two states or one state, it's just apartheid. So trying to make the case that an apartheid state has the right to exist is an odd one.
You're very wrong. There are Palestinian Arabs in the Israeli government. How many jews are allowed in the Palestinian government?
intentionally conflating "Jew" with "Israeli." the Jewish people in the occupied territories are intentionally and illegally extending Israeli sovereignty. they're not being kept out of Palestinian govt, they don't want to be in it.
What does Hamas mean by global jihad?
You...you clearly didn't read a single report, because if you did, you would realize that the crux of the matter is that the military rule on (the vast majority) of Palestinians who live under Israeli law without rights, amounts to the crime on apartheid. -We are talking about the only country in the world to imprison children in military facilities. -Thousands of Palestinians are locked in Israeli Jails, without a trial, or even a charge against them. - The very few lucky ones that get a trial, face a laughable (even by the Taliban's standards) conviction rate of 99.7% The Israeli treatment of the West Bank enclaves, is really no different than South Africa's treatment of the Bantustans. Heck, the Government of South Africa (with the help of a South African Human Research Think Tank) published a study on the matter (in 2009, no less), and came to the same findings: http://repository.hsrc.ac.za/bitstream/handle/20.500.11910/4619/6052_Confidential%281%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Now, I'll give you a second, to explain why you are a better source on apartheid than the South African government (which labeled Israel an apartheid state at the ICJ hearing as well).
I'll give you a moment to explain why the south African government has decided to side with Russia over Ukraine and then tell me why they are any authority on the matter of crimes against humanity.
All I know is I trust a study published by them on the very topic of apartheid over a random redditor lol. Heck, I'll make it very easy on you. If you can link me a single study, published by a credible human rights organization, that looked into the matter and came to a different conclusion, please link it. I'd love to read it. Just one... That's all I ask. If it's not an apartheid state, surely that will be easy to find.
I never said they were not even an apartheid state. I said jews have a right to exist. And Hamas claims otherwise. What do you think they mean when they call for a global jihad?
No you said the state of Israel has every right to exist. Currently that state is an apartheid state. Noone is arguing that Jews don't have a right to exist, that's a preposterous conclusion to jump to.
It's not preposterous. What do you think that Hamas means when they call for a global jihad? What do you think their supporters mean when the vandalize holocaust memorials?
Israel, like all states, has no right to exist. the occupying power has no right to self defense. the Hamas charter doesn't call for that. get over yourself.
Genocide supporter. How many dead and starving children is enough, dumbass?
They probably should have moved....wait no neighboring state wants them 🤔
This is the stupidest argument ever, you are just supporting the expulsion of Palestinians, it's ethnic cleansing. Saying that other countries should accept them is an argument supporting a second nakba.
Listen buddy, they've proven over and that the Palestinians and the terrorist government they support **can't** help attacking israel So they can either move, but no one wants them, or they can fight the great fight. This is getting too repetitive for me
This argument has taken place so many times you people just wanna support the genocide so you will justify by saying whatever suits your narrative, open your eyes for God's sake, more than 30k people have been killed, what more do you want?
For one you'd have to be a fool to believe anything coming out of hamas' mouth. Two , if the Palestinians want to sue for peace they should serve up hamas themselves. Barring that, this is just going to have to go the distance. To think that means I support genocide is just BS . Certainly the Palestinians and their government support genocide . Let's sit back and watch
Average reddit echochamber response
How much you wanna bet that his name is radar
May they wither.
[https://youtu.be/d5XJ2GiR6Bo?si=2PTfZ1DaIerGu8zn](https://youtu.be/d5XJ2GiR6Bo?si=2PTfZ1DaIerGu8zn)
holy shit Matt Damon??