Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of bombing of Hiroshima. There has been a lot written about the decision to drop the atomic bomb. The WSJ had a very interesting story that brought-up some interesting points. Some of the perspectives were known (or estimated) prior to the planned invasion of Japan. Other facts became more clear after the War ended.
It's difficult to make any argument about a great loss of life being a better alternative, because you never really know what other alternatives there were. Many are lost to time and perspectives of an all-out war. With Hiroshima, I think you have to keep in mind that the US was committed to an invasion of Japan on November 1, 1945.
Interesting perspective in the WSJ story and some new (to me) facts about the strength of the Japanese resistance, Soviet entry into the Pacific war, the typhoons of October 1945 and April 1946...
The Atomic Bomb Saved Millions--Including Japanese - (
New Window )
The geo-political climate of the time (1945) doesn't support this. The Soviet Union held a protected and special relationship in the Roosevelt Administration (later to a lesser extent in the Truman Administration). During WWII, Roosevelt was virtually in bed with Uncle Joe Stalin and the lend lease program was more pro-Soviet than the US/UK lend lease. Only later was the depth of the penetration of the communists in the highest levels of Government a catalyst for the "McCarthy era" and Cold War. The Venona Papers really brought this from accusation to reality. It finally exposed the roles of Harry Hopkins, Alger Hiss, etc. in shaping communist influences during WWII.
As an aside, the incendiary bombing raids of Tokyo a month or so earlier killed more people than the dropping the first bomb did. They weren't going to surrender.
I have always thought that as awful as the use of the weapons was, had they not been used then, bigger weapons may have been used later in the cold war era. Once people saw the destructive power of the bomb, they realized that its deterrence value was its only value.
Allied casualty estimates for an invasion were in the high six figures to well over 1 million. Also the war would have dragged on for over a year at least.
Was it the right thing to do? I don't know. It's a hard call & above my pay grade.
Welcome to 2020... we live in a culture of judgement. Judgements about history have no boundaries, guardrails and facts are optional - feelings obligatory. The WSJ article (I hope it's not behind a pay wall) really addresses facts about the invasion. I think the idea of making judgements is subjective, but the facts provide interesting insight.
And not used on Hiroshima.
The Battle of Okinawa lasted 82 days and cost at least 240,000 lives (149K Okinawans, 77K Japanese soldiers, 14K American soliders). This should give you a decent impression of the scale of losses an invasion of Japan would have incurred.
Did you know that only now, 75 years and several wars later, is the US military close to running out of the supply of Purple Heart medals that were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties inflicted by an invasion of Japan? That's right, every Purple Heart received in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and a myriad of minor conflicts was made before 1946.
For whatever reason, very few Americans seem to be aware of just how bloody the Battle of Okinawa was. Hell, I'm a pretty enthusiastic consumer of WWII history AND my grandfather was a casualty when his LST was hit by a kamikaze there, and it even surprised me when I read a book about Oki a few years back. An invasion of Japan would likely have been unfathomable in its loss of life on both sides.
Interesting that you mention that... this was Physicist Edward Teller's rationale for using the first atomic bomb against a civil/military target:
In college history we learned there are two sides to every story, and maybe the U.S. was coldly calculating and bloodthirsty, and dropping the bomb was unnecessary and inhumane. To which even at 18-19 I could only think, You are out of your damn mind.
Tokyo was never a target. The confusion was eliminated when the target selection committee minutes were declassified. "Tokyo Bay" was a consideration for the demonstration of the bomb. After the decision to move forward with a combat application of the bomb, the use focused on three qualifications – “a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter…capable of being damaged effectively by the blast and…likely to be unattacked by [August 1946]"
Nagasaki really was a quirk of ill-fate. The sites chosen by the target selection committee were (in order): Kokura, Yokohama, Hiroshima, and Kyoto. Nilgata was later added.
Interestingly Nilgata was added to round-out the target list, because Sec of War, Stimson lobbied Truman to remove Kyoto from the list, because of its cultural significance. Kyoto was replaced by Nagasaki. Targeting was finalized on July 25, 1945: Hiroshima, Kokura, Nilgata, Nagasaki were the final targets.
In an interesting and tragic quirk of fate, the second and larger bomb (Fat Man) on August 9th was destined for Kokura, but a surprise cloud cover changed the objective at the last moment to yep... Nagasaki.
Was it horrendous? Absolutely. Was it necessary? Probably. They were estimating 250k to 500k US casualties and maybe 2 mill Japanese.
Also, between the fire bombings of Tokyo and even Dresden(which had zero military value) as many people died as in each of the A-Bombs.
I've posted it several times before, but here's the full interview with my dad for any newbies that might have missed it in the past. It's towards the very end that he talks about the bomb...
One of the thickest, genuine, Lower East Side accents you will ever hear... - ( New Window )
The Battle of Okinawa lasted 82 days and cost at least 240,000 lives (149K Okinawans, 77K Japanese soldiers, 14K American soliders). This should give you a decent impression of the scale of losses an invasion of Japan would have incurred.
Did you know that only now, 75 years and several wars later, is the US military close to running out of the supply of Purple Heart medals that were manufactured in anticipation of the casualties inflicted by an invasion of Japan? That's right, every Purple Heart received in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and a myriad of minor conflicts was made before 1946.
For whatever reason, very few Americans seem to be aware of just how bloody the Battle of Okinawa was. Hell, I'm a pretty enthusiastic consumer of WWII history AND my grandfather was a casualty when his LST was hit by a kamikaze there, and it even surprised me when I read a book about Oki a few years back. An invasion of Japan would likely have been unfathomable in its loss of life on both sides.
That’s amazing when you really think about in those comparisons.
Back to the OP I didn’t mean to drop my first comment as judgmental in any way. Hope I didn’t come off that way. FWIW I agree with the takes here that the atom bomb was a necessary evil. Seems that comment derailed the thread a bit, sorry wasn’t my intentions.
What was left of Japan's factories and workshops struggled fitfully to turn out weapons and other goods from inadequate raw materials. (Oil supplies had not been available since April.) By July about a quarter of all the houses in Japan had been destroyed, and her transportation system was near collapse. Food had become so scarce that most Japanese were subsisting on a sub-starvation diet.
On the night of March 9-10, 1945, a wave of 300 American bombers struck Tokyo, killing 100,000 people. Dropping nearly 1,700 tons of bombs, the war planes ravaged much of the capital city, completely burning out 16 square miles and destroying a quarter of a million structures. A million residents were left homeless.
On May 23, eleven weeks later, came the greatest air raid of the Pacific War, when 520 giant B-29 "Superfortress" bombers unleashed 4,500 tons of incendiary bombs on the heart of the already battered Japanese capital. Generating gale-force winds, the exploding incendiaries obliterated Tokyo's commercial center and railway yards, and consumed the Ginza entertainment district. Two days later, on May 25, a second strike of 502 "Superfortress" planes roared low over Tokyo, raining down some 4,000 tons of explosives. Together these two B-29 raids destroyed 56 square miles of the Japanese capital.
Even before the Hiroshima attack, American air force General Curtis LeMay boasted that American bombers were "driving them [Japanese] back to the stone age." Henry H. ("Hap") Arnold, commanding General of the Army air forces, declared in his 1949 memoirs: "It always appeared to us, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." This was confirmed by former Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoye, who said: "Fundamentally, the thing that brought about the determination to make peace was the prolonged bombing by the B-29s."
By mid-June, six members of Japan's Supreme War Council had secretly charged Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo with the task of approaching Soviet Russia's leaders "with a view to terminating the war if possible by September." On June 22 the Emperor called a meeting of the Supreme War Council, which included the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the leading military figures. "We have heard enough of this determination of yours to fight to the last soldiers," said Emperor Hirohito. "We wish that you, leaders of Japan, will strive now to study the ways and the means to conclude the war. In doing so, try not to be bound by the decisions you have made in the past."
By early July the US had intercepted messages from Togo to the Japanese ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato, showing that the Emperor himself was taking a personal hand in the peace effort, and had directed that the Soviet Union be asked to help end the war. US officials also knew that the key obstacle to ending the war was American insistence on "unconditional surrender," a demand that precluded any negotiations. The Japanese were willing to accept nearly everything, except turning over their semi-divine Emperor. Heir of a 2,600-year-old dynasty, Hirohito was regarded by his people as a "living god" who personified the nation. (Until the August 15 radio broadcast of his surrender announcement, the Japanese people had never heard his voice.) Japanese particularly feared that the Americans would humiliate the Emperor, and even execute him as a war criminal.
On July 12, Hirohito summoned Fumimaro Konoye, who had served as prime minister in 1940-41. Explaining that "it will be necessary to terminate the war without delay," the Emperor said that he wished Konoye to secure peace with the Americans and British through the Soviets. As Prince Konoye later recalled, the Emperor instructed him "to secure peace at any price, notwithstanding its severity." The next day, July 13, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired ambassador Naotake Sato in Moscow: "See [Soviet foreign minister] Molotov before his departure for Potsdam ... Convey His Majesty's strong desire to secure a termination of the war ... Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace ..."
On July 17, another intercepted Japanese message revealed that although Japan's leaders felt that the unconditional surrender formula involved an unacceptable dishonor, they were convinced that "the demands of the times" made Soviet mediation to terminate the war absolutely essential. Further diplomatic messages indicated that the only condition asked by the Japanese was preservation of "our form of government." The only "difficult point," a July 25 message disclosed, "is the ... formality of unconditional surrender."
Summarizing the messages between Togo and Sato, US naval intelligence said that Japan's leaders, "though still balking at the term unconditional surrender," recognized that the war was lost, and had reached the point where they have "no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the [1941] Atlantic Charter." These messages, said Assistant Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss, "indeed stipulated only that the integrity of the Japanese Royal Family be preserved." Navy Secretary James Forrestal termed the intercepted messages "real evidence of a Japanese desire to get out of the war." "With the interception of these messages," notes historian Alperovitz (p. 177), "there could no longer be any real doubt as to the Japanese intentions; the maneuvers were overt and explicit and, most of all, official acts. Koichi Kido, Japan's Lord Privy Seal and a close advisor to the Emperor, later affirmed: "Our decision to seek a way out of this war, was made in early June before any atomic bomb had been dropped and Russia had not entered the war. It was already our decision."
I'm sorry, but if the Japanese wanted to end the war with the only stipulation that the Emperor remains, why did they not ask for that right after Okinawa fell? It is what they got in the end. It is what MacArthur knew the US had to do so the Japanese could save some face.
I have no doubt that they were beaten militarily, probably (long)before Iwo Jima. Just like Germany was defeated right after the Battle of the Bulge. But both fought on with no chance to win.
I'm sorry, but if the Japanese wanted to end the war with the only stipulation that the Emperor remains, why did they not ask for that right after Okinawa fell? It is what they got in the end. It is what MacArthur knew the US had to do so the Japanese could save some face.
I have no doubt that they were beaten militarily, probably (long)before Iwo Jima. Just like Germany was defeated right after the Battle of the Bulge. But both fought on with no chance to win.
Exactly, they knew they were beaten but fought on. This would cost us lives for really now reason. Why would we not look for wards to end this with less fatalities.