The WWII Atomic Bomb Attacks Hiroshima and Nagasaki

My first D&D post- I usually post in the hangout but figured this was a polarizing topic that would get booted here anyway. The Dec 7 thread in the hangout had turned to this but I figured it deserved it's own discussion.

In a nutshell, the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WWII weren't entirely necessary. We were bombing them into the stone age without nukes. I'm not saying that it was good or bad, just wanted the facts out there.

My argument, backed up:

I'm currently reading a book called 'Why the Allies Won' by Richard Overy, a preeminent WWII historian. I scanned pages 126-127 just for my fellow CFers.

This is probably the most accurate representation of what was really going on at the end of the war with Japan. Check out the book, Overy sites his sources. As you can see, the Japanese were already discussing surrender before the atomic bomb.

P126

With so much power to inflict massive physical destruction it was difficult
to resist the temptation to turn the bombing weapon against Japan. For
long geography had been Japan's salvation. But by the spring of 1945 the
American forces in the Pacific had finally secured island bases from which
it was possible to hit Japanese cities. The air forces, now equipped with a
new heavy-bomber, the B-29 Super-Fortress, were ordered to do what they
had done in Europe, to soften up mainland Japan to ease the America
conquest of the home islands. But against a flimsy air defence quite
unprepared for the aerial onslaught the bombers were able to deslroy
almost at will. In the end air power alone was able to bring Japan to the
point of surrender.

In the six months between April and August 1945 21st Bomber Command,
under the direction of General Curtis LeMay, devastated most of
Japan's major cities. One by one the urban areas were ticked off as vast
quantities of incendiary bombs were poured on to houses of wood, bamboo
and paper. So poor were the defences that the B-29s could fly in at just 7,000
feet to release their bombs. Against the firestorms they caused there was
little the emergency services could do. Using only a fraction of the bomb
tonnage disgorged on Europe the Command destroyed 40 per cent of the
built-up area of 66 cities. In desperate efforts to halt the spread of the
conflagrations the Japanese authorities knocked down over half a million
houses to form fire breaks. The terrified populations fled into the hills and
the countryside. Over eight million refugees clogged the villages; in the
factories absenteeism rose to 50 per cent. A combination of sea blockade
and bombing reduced most Japanese industries to a mere fraction of their
wartime peak - by July aluminium production was reduced to 9 per cent, oil
refining and steel production to 15 per cent. All except the most diehard
militarists could see that Japan was defeated.

In Tokyo the politicians and generals squabbled over the terms of a
possible surrender while American bombers remorselessly ate away at _
very fabric of Japanese life. The equivocation cost Japan dear. At long last
the Americans had not only a 'super-bomber' but also a 'super-bomb".

Science fiction became science fact. On 16 July in the heart of the New
Mexico desert the first atomic device was successfully exploded. A second
was shipped in a lead casket across the Pacific. Months before, LeMay
been told to reserve some Japanese cities for special treatment, and the fire-
bombers left alone Kyoto, Hiroshima and Niigata. On 24 July the 20th air
force was ordered to prepare for atomic attacks on two Japanese cities
Hiroshima was selected for the first, Niigata was rejected as too far north.

p127

For the second LeMay proposed Nagasaki, farther south down the coast,
which he had not yet reached on his city hit-list. America's new President,
Harry Truman, gave his approval to destroy what he insisted on calling a
'military base', when everyone knew Hiroshima was an ordinary city, like so
many of those already torched.

For the inhabitants of Hiroshima their neglect by LeMay's bombers was
welcome but unnerving. Superstitions quickly spread. It was widely believed
that rubbing a pickled onion over the scalp, to symbolise a bombing,
rendered immunity. The rumour spread through the city that President
Truman's mother was Japanese and lived in seclusion in Hiroshima. The
reality was nightmarishly, almost absurdly different. On the morning of 6
August a single atomic bomb was loaded on to a B-29, christened the Enola
Gay a few days before. As it approached Hiroshima the air-raid alarms
began, but on the sight of only one aircraft the all-clear was sounded. A few
minutes later a single bomb destroyed in seconds 50 per cent of the city and
killed forty thousand people. Here was Super-Armageddon with a vengeance.
Everything around the bomb was shrivelled to ash. The thick black
clay tiles which covered most Japanese roofs boiled and bubbled over a mile
from the explosion. Windows shattered 5 miles away. Demented survivors
staggered into the suburbs, ghoulish, doomed. A young student observed
them: 'Their faces were all burned and the meat on their faces was hanging
down, the lymph dripping all over their bodies.' As for Hiroshima,
'everything - as far as the eye could reach - is a waste of ashes and ruin.

The Japanese authorities could scarcely believe what had happened.
Frantic efforts were made to find a surrender formula, but too slowly to
avoid a second, equally devastating attack on Nagasaki on 9 August. By the
end of 1945 seventy thousand people, half the city's population, were dead.
Even Truman was horrified by the results and called a halt to atomic attacks.
Yet five days later, as the Emperor, Hirohito, prepared to broadcast the
surrender of Japan, a thousand bombers bearing incendiaries inflicted a
final, retributive, flourish. The bombers might have failed to bring Germany
to defeat unaided, but the ruthless destruction of Japanese cities from the
air made direct invasion here redundant. The war was over.​

 

Read the quote, Overy's research shows that they were looking for a way to surrender anyway. A mainland invasion was never going to happen.

If we had the bomb earlier, absolutely. I'm not for or against it, I just think we used it because we had it. It was war and it was a weapon. But we didn't need to use it, because our 'traditional' bombing campaign was doing the job nicely.

 

I think it's important to back up and point out that the Allies agreed to an 'Unconditional Surrender' policy. That alone may have justified the nukes in question by pushing the Japanese leadership into just saying 'I surrender' as opposed to trying to negotiate terms. But I don't doubt that they were absolutely going to surrender at the point of the atomic bombs.

I fail to see how 'Remorselessly' renders us (Americans) as the bad guys. We were pounding them into submission, it seems the appropriate word, ESPECIALLY given that we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.

As for dishonoring the memory of Pearl Harbor... you should probably be applauding me for taking the debate out of the other thread by creating this thread.