Comment thread for Debate: The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and

[ctj]

I posted this once before, but it seems apropos here:

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... By the time we decided to use the bombs, the US government was aware that Japan had made a decision to surrender, afaik.

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AFAIK, the militarists in control of Japan had not made a decision to surrender on any terms acceptable to the Allies. They were prepared to defend the Home Islands to the last man.

See 'Why Truman Dropped the Bomb' by Richard B. Frank for a good summary of the evidence. The summation of the article states:

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There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.

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To those who say dropping the bombs was about saving American lives, here is another quote from the same article:

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This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations.

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[TomCollins]

Andyfox showed up. Is it too early to declare him the winner?

[cdutilb]

Here is an interesting take on this...

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The Morality of Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
by Thomas Sowell (August 9, 2005)

Every August, there are some Americans who insist on wringing their hands over the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, so it was perhaps inevitable that such people would have an orgy of wallowing in guilt on the 60th anniversary of that tragic day. Time magazine has page after page of photographs of people scarred by the radiation, as if General Sherman had not already said long ago that war is hell.

Winston Churchill once spoke of the secrets of the atom, "hitherto mercifully withheld from man." We can all lament that this terrible power of mass destruction has been revealed to the world and fear its ominous consequences for us all, including our children and grandchildren. But that is wholly different from saying that a great moral evil was committed when the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What was new about these bombs was the technology, not the morality. More people were killed with ordinary bombs in German cities or in Tokyo. Vastly more people were killed with ordinary bullets and cannon on the Russian front. Morality is about what you do to people, not the technology you use.

The guilt-mongers have twisted the facts of history beyond recognition in order to say that it was unnecessary to drop those atomic bombs. Japan was going to lose the war anyway, they say. What they don't say is -- at what price in American lives? Or even in Japanese lives?

Much of the self-righteous nonsense that abounds on so many subjects cannot stand up to three questions: (1) Compared to what? (2) At what cost? and (3) What are the hard facts?

The alternative to the atomic bombs was an invasion of Japan, which was already being planned for 1946, and those plans included casualty estimates even more staggering than the deaths that have left a sea of crosses in American cemeteries at Normandy and elsewhere. "Revisionist" historians have come up with casualty estimates a small fraction of what the American and British military leaders responsible for planning the invasion of Japan had come up with.

Who are we to believe, those who had personally experienced the horrors of the war in the Pacific, and who had a lifetime of military experience, or leftist historians hot to find something else to blame America for?

During the island-hopping war in the Pacific, it was not uncommon for thousands of Japanese troops to fight to the death on an island, while the number captured were a few dozen. Even some Japanese soldiers too badly wounded to stand would lie where they fell until an American medical corpsman approached to treat their wounds -- and then they would set off a grenade to kill them both.

In the air the same spirit led the kamikaze pilots to deliberately crash their planes into American ships and bombers.

Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the same suicidal battle tactics. That invasion could have been the greatest bloodbath in history.

No mass killing, especially of civilians, can leave any humane person happy. But compared to what? Compared to killing many times more Japanese and seeing many times more American die?

We might have gotten a negotiated peace if we had dropped the "unconditional surrender" demand. But at what cost? Seeing a militaristic Japan arise again in a few years, this time armed with nuclear weapons that they would not have hesitated for one minute to drop on Americans.

As it was, the unconditional surrender of Japan enabled General Douglas MacArthur to engineer one of the great historic transformations of a nation from militarism to pacifism, to the relief of hundreds of millions of their neighbors, who had suffered horribly at the hands of their Japanese conquerors.

The facts may deprive the revisionists of their platform for lashing out at America and for the ego trip of moral preening but, fear not, they will find or manufacture other occasions for that. The rest of us need to understand what irresponsible frauds they are -- and how the stakes are too high to let the 4th estate succeed as a 5th column undermining the society on which our children and grandchildren's security will depend.

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http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4362

[iron81]

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Andyfox showed up. Is it too early to declare him the winner?

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I don't think so. I think my opening salvo was pretty good. Unfortunately, I have no idea how well I'm going to do because I don't know what Andy's argument is going to be.

To be honest, I know I'm up against someone who has a stronger knowledge of history than I. I'm not sure I plan on convincing anyone, I'm just curious what Andy's case will be.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

My understanding is that it was clear that Japan was going to lose and that the atomic bombs just hastened the surrender, saving American lives that might have been lost in a bloody invasion. It's up for debate as to how likely an invasion was or how bloody it would have been.

So, were they ready to surrender? No. While there was a faction that favored peace, there was also a military faction that refused to give up. Were they going to be forced to surrender? It seems certain that the end was inevitable.

One motivation that I have seen stated for the bombings was to show off their use as a deterrent to the Soviet Union. Another was to bring the war to a close sooner before the Soviets could become involved in the Pacific Theater and be in a place to demand concessions and spheres of influence in the region.

Oh yeah, the first person to cite Wikipedia automatically loses this debate.

[Dan.]

I have faith, Iron.

[natedogg]

I think they are debating the less interesting question. A more interesting question about the atomic bombs is this: Was it a reasonable decision to drop them given the times and given what the americans knew?

Whether or not dropping the bombs ended the war is not that important. It probably hastened the end by some amount of time, and it obvious we would have won the war even without the nukes.

So what?

natedogg

[kickabuck]

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Andyfox showed up. Is it too early to declare him the winner?

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I don't think so. I think my opening salvo was pretty good. Unfortunately, I have no idea how well I'm going to do because I don't know what Andy's argument is going to be.

To be honest, I know I'm up against someone who has a stronger knowledge of history than I. I'm not sure I plan on convincing anyone, I'm just curious what Andy's case will be.

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Let's go iron, this is no time for 'Oh well I'm going to do my best' drivel. Get pumped and take no prisoners! Nuke the pinko bastard! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Poofler]

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Let's go iron, this is no time for 'Oh well I'm going to do my best' drivel. Get pumped and take no prisoners! Nuke the pinko bastard! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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He won't surrender until you do!

[andyfox]

Take a look now. I've entered several posts covering various points in the historical debate.