Were we right in dropping the bomb?

I would suggest that there was logic in dropping the first bomb but the second drop was clearly wrong.

The Japanese were very much on the verge of surrendering after the first one, it was only a matter of the terms. If the Allies had offered a ceasefire and invited a deputation of the Japanese Government to America to see the programme and how many atomic bombs were either ready to in production I think there is little doubt Japan would have sued for peace.

The first bomb, horrific though it was, saved many thousands of Allied lives. The second one unecessarily killed many Japanese.

 

This is absolutely incorrect. The Japanese refused to surrender following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. You may think there is "little doubt" Japan should have been willing to surrender prior to the bombing of Nagasaki, but you're incorrect in doing so.

Why do you think we waited three days to drop the second bomb?

 

It wasn't just Allied lives that were saved. Japan had armed the entire population (women & children included), mainly with spears, clubs & very primitive weapons. Foxholes & fortifications had been dug throughout the islands. Millions of Japanese civilians would have died in an invasion.

 

Imagine being born in Nagasaki or Hiroshima with leukemia generations after the bomb dropped. Sad to think about it. War sucks.

 

Unless we are walking in the shoes of the men who made the decision, and understand all that was going on at the time, then we should not judge them.

DaDakota

 

Japanese lives were saved. American lives were saved. Innocent people died, and that sucks, but we didn't start the war, we ended it.

 

Japan had plenty of time to think about our retaliation when they were planning their first strike. They knew something was going to happen.

 

my grandfather was in okinawa and i believe he also fought at leyte...next stop for him was the main island of Japan...he was always convinced the atomic bomb saved his life...

 

like BrianKagy said - the Japanese did not want to surrender. The losses to both sides would have been HUGE, just look at the number of people that died in the invasion of Berlin and extrapolate that to a whole country. I remember reading that USSR lost 100,000 men taking Berlin and 125,000 Germans died.

The US planned the bombings very carefully, they actually picked Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of there terrain and "low" populations. This was to minimize the # of innocent deaths. Imagine what a nuclear bomb exploded over Tokyo would have done. There have been several good history channels specials about this same question.

 

I remember reading about a city that was orginally going to have the bomb dropped onto it, except the day was to overcast which prevented them from dropping it. So they moved to the next city, which was Hiroshima (I think). How's that for lucky.

 

Howdy -- long-time lurker, first time poster...

This is a naive oversimplification. Piranha's comment is not "absolutely incorrect." The Japanese did not simply refuse to surrender -- it was just extremely difficult to accept the terms, which included renouncing their emperor. Some willingness to make some reasonable compromises on our part -- which ironically in the end were made anyway -- could have persuaded the Japanese to surrender and averted the use of the bombs.

Of course, you can argue that "the Japs started it, why should we compromise, blah-blah..." Note that some key American military leaders and policymakers felt that dropping either of the a-bombs was unnecessary:

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER:

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63




ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY:
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.




HERBERT HOOVER:
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.




GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR:
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.


After 9-11, I just find it very hard under any circumstances to justify the murder of innocents and civilians.

 

what people dont realize is that the war was pretty much over. not only was nuclear bombs TOTALLY unneccisary, but d-day is too. what did d-day save us, a month? two? and we lost way more lives then we should have. how many people did america lose in the war? russia lost what fifteen million? the usa did not do anything important in the war...they killed innocent civilians in japan and soldiers in dday. i seiously do not think that war was too much usa, it was more other countries. thats not how this country wants you to think, judging by the war movies. war would have been fought about six months more had we not joined the war. im not questioning the country...im thinkin alot more lives could have been saved.

what the hell are the japanese goin to do w spears and stones...spear our aircraft to the ground?

 

Had we not dropped the first one, Stalin or Kruschev would have. Believe it: one big reason the cold war was so successful was because Russia knew we had the guts (or insanity) to use one, or two, or three, or four, or maybe even 1,000 all at once.

bwahahahahahaha

If not for our bold first strike, the axis of evil would have held the world hostage for a ransom of -- One M i l l i on Dollars. Good thing they are all poor countries.

 

Hamachi, that's an excellent first post. But all those quotes prove to me is:

A) Some Americans opposed dropping the bomb

B) Some Americans thought that Japan could be defeated without dropping it.

I think we're all aware of both of those points. I never said that either of those things weren't true. I simply said that Piranha's claim that Japan was on the verge of surrendering was incorrect.

It's problematic to assert that the acquiescence of America on the issue of retaining Japan's monarchy was responsible for Japan's surrender, because at the time that acquiescence was made, the second bomb had already been dropped. Did the retention of the monarchy matter? Certainly. Can the surrender be attributed solely to that factor? I don't see how.

America could certainly have won the war without dropping the atomic bombs, but my American history textbook from college indicated that the American casualties from an invasion of the Japanese home islands were estimated to be up to one million. Japanese resistance at Okinawa had been fanatical, making it entirely reasonable to assume that their resistance to invastion of Kyushu and Honshu would have been equally fierce.

I don't deny that Japan's capacity for making war had been severely damaged by American bombing. That doesn't mean its willingness to resist was in any way impaired. The fact that Japan reacted to the first atomic bomb with anything other than an immediate unconditional surrender simply indicates to me that the Japanese were assessing the situation looking for some way in which the fight could be carried on rather than acknowledging they were beaten.

I don't celebrate the use of atomic weapons, but war is hell and the atomic bombs shortened the length of the Pacific conflict, saving American lives. And that, to me, is the primary measure of their efficacy.

 

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/anw/index.html

20 Situations were the Cold War almost got hot.

 

Barton Bernstein has been pushing that canard for years. He also claims that the US estimates of a million American casualties during the invasion of Japan were wildly exaggerated. He's the Ramsay Clark of American academia.

 

I wouldn't even know where to begin refuting all the ridiculous assertions & misinformation in this post. I suggest you read a little more on the subject.

 

jello77 - go here

www.worldwarIIfordummies.com

 

I'm not sure I understand what 9-11 has to do with this. What did you learn from 9-11 that you didn't know before?

My father-in-law, who was on his way to Japan after serving in Italy when the war ended, would strongly disagree with anyone who thinks the use of the atomic bomb was wrong. I have a hard time believing that anyone in his shoes would feel differently.