Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Atomic Bomb
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Β
Posted by vesturiiis (U13688567) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
Was the use of atomic force overkill so to speak akin to swatting mosquitoes with baseball bats. Japan I don't believe was going to rise up and overwelm the Allies at this point in 1945. Did President Truman merely want to assert the USA's dominant role worldwide and give the Russian Bear a pause?
-
Message 2
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
This has to viewed in conjuction with the fighting on the Pacific islands where a lot of American soldiers were needed and were being killed to defeat the Japanese soldiers and that the Japanese would fight to the death. President Truman became President very late in the war and the Manhattan Project had been going for some time, but the effects of using the atomic bomb were not known as we do today. The likelihood is the bomb would have been used at some stage and we know that there was consideration to using it during the Vietnam War. The Americans were one of the few countries that were economically sound after the Second World War and that gave them a leading role in the World. One could also argue about the Nazi development of an atomic bomb had the Allies not stopped them..
-
Message 3
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
At that stage of WW2, a lot of warfare was "overkill". American bombers systematically destroyed Japanese cities with firebombs, killing hundreds of tbiusands of Japanese in the process. Submarines and air-dropped mines had strangled Japanese naval traffic, threathening the country with famine. Carrier forces approached the Japanese shores to add their part to the destruction.
The blunt reality was that the USA was willing to do whatever it took to force Japan to surrender, and that it was not counting Japanese casualties, and not making any exceptions for women and children. The bitter fighting on the islands in the Pacific and on Okinawa had reinforced the belief that the Japanese would always fight to the last man. (Propaganda from Tokyo only emphasized that.) If the US had not used the nuclear bombs, it would have used brutal means of conventional warfare to subdue Japan, and it is highly likely that the cost in Japanese lives would only have been even higher. The nuclear bombs had the advantage of shocking the Japanese government into accepting the inevitable.
In practical terms, Truman did not really have much choice. After the huge amount of money that had been spent on its development, not using a weapon that could end the war, when American soldiers and sailors were dying every day, was not a realistic option. Especially not when the prediction was that an invasion of Japan would result in a long, bitter fight and high casualties.
Considerations about the relationship with the USSR were complex. In Yalta, the Americans had still been willing to pay a price (or make the Chinese pay a price) to see the USSR enter the war against Japan. At that time, it was assumed that the war in the Pacific would go on another 18 months after the end of the war in Europe. Truman in Potsdam was more confident and probably had good reason to regret a deal that strengthened the USSR's position in the Far East. Stalin, for his part, was very eager to profit from the opportunities in Manchuria, where the once-proud Kwantung Army was now a shadow of itself and no match at all for the battle-hardened Red Army. Meanwhile, the Japanese were naively trying to use the Soviets as intermediaries to negotiate a ceasefire: Moscow was not interested and, as their own ambassador objected, the terms Tokyo was willing to offer were absurd.
From the Amerian point of view, the priority was to end the war quickly. This would have the benefit of limiting the scale of Soviet advance and minimize its role in the occupation of Japan. (Actually Moscow was seriously annoyed when Japan suddenly surrendered, and fighting between Soviet and Japanese forces continued for several days after the Japanese surrender, as the USSR occupied a number of islands.) But the priority was to end the war as soon as possible and at the lowest possible cost. All the rest was incidental. -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
vesturiis
The use of the atomic bombs has been quite controversial for some time.. The Japanese quite early on raised up the issue of racism suggesting that the Allies would never have used such a weapon on a European population.. that -in effect they used the Japanese as guinnea pigs.
It is an issue that has haunted me all my life.
But in terms of your OP -as I understand it "overkill" does not apply.. Carpet Fire bomb raids on Tokyo had been responsible for even greater loss of life.. One night I believe 200,000 dead. And though no doubt the bombing of two new cities highlighted the terrible power of the A bomb- I am not sure that former targets like Tokyo had much to offer from a bombing point of view.
Having read many harrowing accounts of the Hiroshima bombing- including "The Children of the A Bomb" , which was collected from an exercise that was set to the city's surviving ten year old children in their last year at primary school in 1950, the real problem was that the Japanese had a culture of no surrender- or rather no surrender that meant abandonning the Emperor Hirohito.
Aldous Huxley had written in the introduction to "Brave New World" c1930 that in this terrible new world we were living in it was no longer to have wars which, however tragic, were eventually cut short (as in the eighteenth century) because the ruling elites would eventually call for negotiations..
It seems that in "People's Wars"- though there used to be a feminist argument that said wars were things that men started and women would never-- emotions get even more stirred up and angry and revenge ridden with women at least as bad as the men..
It is the tragedy of our democratic system that "the masses" used to have such insular and ignorant attitudes to "foreigners" and "enemies"- stirred up by the media and government propaganda- (and I am not sure that 'trips to the costa brava have changed this radically) that all rational and reasonable conclusions to conflicts became impossible... Unfortunately democratic politics has a strong tradition of pandering to lowest possible denominators- for they are the widest spread.
So just as the British public was persuaded to take revenge on Germany in 1918 and sqeeze them for reparations until the pips squeak , emotions ran so high after the Blitz and the Second Blitz of the V1 and V2 that only "unconditional surrender" would be acceptable.. And the Japanese would not surrender if it meant the removal of the Emperor..
So even after Hiroshima the Japanese would not surrender. And it was followed by Nagasaki..
I believe from the relevant episode in "The People's Century" that there was then some clarification that it might be possible to argue that- as had happened in Japanese history during the long Shogunate for over 200 years up to c1860- the conduct of affairs had been in effect taken out of the Emperor's hands and had been assumed once more by the military caste..
Once this possibility had been suggested the Emperor ordered all his subjects to stop fighting..
And of course in the Japanese tradition that you fight only to be victorious- and can only save face in defeat by killing yourself- many Japanese committed hari kiri.
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
vesturiis
The use of the atomic bombs has been quite controversial for some time.. The Japanese quite early on raised up the issue of racism suggesting that the Allies would never have used such a weapon on a European population.. that -in effect they used the Japanese as guinnea pigs.
It is an issue that has haunted me all my life.
But in terms of your OP -as I understand it "overkill" does not apply.. Carpet Fire bomb raids on Tokyo had been responsible for even greater loss of life.. One night I believe 200,000 dead. And though no doubt the bombing of two new cities highlighted the terrible power of the A bomb- I am not sure that former targets like Tokyo had much to offer from a bombing point of view.
Having read many harrowing accounts of the Hiroshima bombing- including "The Children of the A Bomb" , which was collected from an exercise that was set to the city's surviving ten year old children in their last year at primary school in 1950, the real problem was that the Japanese had a culture of no surrender- or rather no surrender that meant abandonning the Emperor Hirohito.
Aldous Huxley had written in the introduction to "Brave New World" c1930 that in this terrible new world we were living in it was no longer to have wars which, however tragic, were eventually cut short (as in the eighteenth century) because the ruling elites would eventually call for negotiations..
It seems that in "People's Wars"- though there used to be a feminist argument that said wars were things that men started and women would never-- emotions get even more stirred up and angry and revenge ridden with women at least as bad as the men..
It is the tragedy of our democratic system that "the masses" used to have such insular and ignorant attitudes to "foreigners" and "enemies"- stirred up by the media and government propaganda- (and I am not sure that 'trips to the costa brava have changed this radically) that all rational and reasonable conclusions to conflicts became impossible... Unfortunately democratic politics has a strong tradition of pandering to lowest possible denominators- for they are the widest spread.
So just as the British public was persuaded to take revenge on Germany in 1918 and sqeeze them for reparations until the pips squeak , emotions ran so high after the Blitz and the Second Blitz of the V1 and V2 that only "unconditional surrender" would be acceptable.. And the Japanese would not surrender if it meant the removal of the Emperor..
So even after Hiroshima the Japanese would not surrender. And it was followed by Nagasaki..
I believe from the relevant episode in "The People's Century" that there was then some clarification that it might be possible to argue that- as had happened in Japanese history during the long Shogunate for over 200 years up to c1860- the conduct of affairs had been in effect taken out of the Emperor's hands and had been assumed once more by the military caste..
Once this possibility had been suggested the Emperor ordered all his subjects to stop fighting..
And of course in the Japanese tradition that you fight only to be victorious- and can only save face in defeat by killing yourself- many Japanese committed hari kiri.
°δ²Ή²υ²υΜύ On the question of "unconditional surrender" Churchill did not plan for this for Germany but this was put before him by Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and as Churchill said at the time that he was just the President's lieutenant and this changed the German attitude to surrender. The mistake at the end of the First World War was reparations laying the seeds of the Second World War and which Keynes warned about and which he resigned over. In Japan most people had never heard the Emperor speak as he was thought to be a god until the Japanese surrender. -
Message 6
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 24th September 2011
Interesting about Keynes and his resignation.. I suspect that there was more than an element of shock horror/guilt that one might expect of an Old Etonian and Cambridge Apostle confronted by an American total absence of any sense of "noblesse oblige"..
In his work at the Treasury during the war Keynes had convinced Lloyd George that the only possible way to pay for the war was by using the Bank of England gold reserves- the ballast for the global economy. In a tense meeting with representatives of The City Lloyd George got into one of his fiery Welsh rages that he was inclined to when confronted by what he saw as grasping greedy money-bags.. So the intimidating duo forced the policy through. In 1917 Keynes could write to his pacifist friends that the war would be over in two weeks because the money would have run out. Then German actions forced the USA into the war.
Going to Paris for Armistice talks, however, Keynes encountered some of the representatives of the US banks- which now held just about all of the UK's gold reserves that had made a functioning global economy possible.. It was immediately obvious to Keynes, however, that -as far a the US banks were concerned the gold was their private property to do with it whatever they pleased. Keynes then began to realise what he had done and wrote his famous book, not exactly as a smokescreen, but anticipating the problems that lay ahead- without pointing out the fundamental element - the fact that the expertise of the Bank of England -finely tuned in the Horsely Palmer period 40 years before was now powerless because the gold reserves were so badly depleted.. The global economy was almost inevitably going to lose all stability and the world economy would descend into Chaos.
Cass -
Message 7
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
On the question of "unconditional surrender" Churchill did not plan for this for Germany but this was put before him by Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference and as Churchill said at the time that he was just the President's lieutenant and this changed the German attitude to surrender.Β
Not Yalta, although the policy was indeed restated there. And when Churchill claimed that he had not been aware of the president's intent he was being economic with the truth. FDR stated it as war goal of the Allies at the end of the conference of Casablanca, in January 43. Churchill had been consulted beforehand, as he later admitted. Roosevelt tried to make it sound like a spontaneous remark, which it was not: He was always inclined to avoid statements on which he could be pinned down. (US politics in the 1940s was even nastier than today.)
That it really changed the German attitude to surrender is unlikely. Hitler and his closest associates had always made it clear that they would fight to the bitter end.
In Japan most people had never heard the Emperor speak as he was thought to be a god until the Japanese surrender.Β
That should not be exaggerated. The emperor was indeed formally deified as part of his Shinto coronation ceremonies, and the official emperor cult was given a boost in the 1930s as part of a strategy to strengthen the authority of the government. But Shinto was only one of many strands of religious feeling in Japan, and behind the official facade, many Japanese were skeptic. Post-war surveys revealed that the majority gave little thought to the issue: They were occupied too much with the struggle for survival. -
Message 8
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 25th September 2011
And the Japanese would not surrender if it meant the removal of the Emperor..Β
It was more complex than that. Retaining the (or rather an) emperor was the symbolic minimum for many, but most of the conservative and military groups wanted more than that: They wanted the preservation of the "kokutai", a term that is often translated as "national polity" but to them meant the whole of Japanese culture, custom, tradition, social order, class structure, power structures, of which the emperor was both a part and the ultimate symbol. Hence their peace feelers that sought, very unrealistically, to end the war without a foreign occupation, or to ensure that war criminals would only be judged by Japanese courts.
And as could be expected, there was a power struggle within Japanese government circles as the war reached its inevitable end. The decision mechanisms, as they still functioned in 1945 (and arguably well beyond that) relied on extensive informal consultations to achieve a consensus that somehow reflected all interests, and was then formally adopted as policy in the presence of the emperor. This was extremely slow and often woefully inefficient. The time between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not long enough for the Japanese government to arrive at a decision. In 1945 the emperor broke the deadlock, against the wish of some his advisors, who felt that it was potentially "embarrassing" for Hirohito to speak out where no consensus yet existed.
And of course in the Japanese tradition that you fight only to be victorious- and can only save face in defeat by killing yourself- many Japanese committed hari kiri.Β
There were suicides, but not such a great number as expected: Hundreds, rather than thousands. Most soldiers felt that if the emperor had ordered the surrender, this permitted them to live on. Repatriated veterans were nevertheless often looked at with a certain reproach by civilians, although this was not only because they had failed to die. Civilians were also shocked by news of atrocities committed by the armed forces, and many discriminated against veterans whose physical or mental health had been damaged in the war. -
Message 9
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Sunday, 16th October 2011
This topic comes up periodically on this board and there is a lot of information and misinformation out there. Some things have been repeated in pubs so long that it is taken without question but is without credible primary source evidence, even the official deliberations have long since been opened and nearly everyone involved has written memoirs or at least commented on it at some time.
It is my understanding that there is no good reason, other than speculation that Truman did for any reason other than the one he gave in his Memoirs as I remember them and I believe consistently throughout his life--to end the war as quickly as possible. He never had any regrets and I see no reason why he should. There is every reason to believe that to have shirked that duty would have led to a great many more deaths over coming months. There is more information about the events in Japan in August of 1945 than were available in the months following the war and they support Truman's analysis regarding the human of the alternative. The Japanese were prepared to take many more casualties than the bombs delivered--they had already. But being able to do it with a single aircraft was an utterly demoralizing shock which made the unthinkable thinkable. -
Message 10
Posted by vesturiiis (U13688567) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
Could Japan in 1945 simply have been left to whither on a vine since their military had little offensive capability.
The war with Germany was over and the Allies were in their stride, with very potent unstoppable war machines.
Wonder how much emphasis is placed on negotiating your way to a peace without wasting lives on both sides. -
Message 11
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
One factor was the fate of Allied captives in Japan.
As Lizzie Collingham pointed out in her history of food during WWII, "The taste of war", the phrase "whither on the vine" was often an euphemism for letting people starve to death. And on isolated Pacific islands, that included not only the Japanese occupation force but also the native population. It often included Allied captives as well: They were generally harshly treated, but in some cases their guards were themselves starving.
The food situation of Japan in 1945 was dire because Allied bombing, mining and submarines had not only stopped all imports, they had also broken the connection between the various Japanese islands. Starving Japan out was feasible, but PoWs in Japanese captivity would suffer as well, and probably worse.
The hardliners in the Japanese military wanted to fight on, but even they well aware that the likely result would be widespread starvation in the winter of 45-46, and the country would not be able to fight past the spring of 46. Hence, ending the war was crucial to the Japanese leadership. The problem was that they wanted to do so on unrealistic terms, because they wanted to protect the political structures that empowered them. Such a continuity in Japanese leadership was exactly what the USA wanted to avoid, a factor for which the Japanese were not entirely blind. The hope of the hardliners was that the invasion and subsequent fighting would be so bloody that the USA would relent and soften their terms. To put it bluntly, they were perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of their own people if it would help them to hang on to their powerful positions. The Americans had enough insight to drop leaflets in which they accused the "military cliques" of prolonging the war, and urged the people to appeal to the emperor to end the fighting.
From the American perspective, ending the war quickly was the one chief priority, and the only lives the US government had any intent of protecting were those of American servicemen. The Potsdam declaration threatened the Japanese with "prompt and utter destruction" and that was meant to be taken literally. The US public was war-weary and wanted it to be over. -
Message 12
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Sunday, 23rd October 2011
vesturiis,
I just wanted to ask you to have again to have a look to what Mutatis Mutandis wrote in this thread, but I see now that he added a second message. And yes there he emphasizes again the stubborness of the military clique.
We have already discussed this subject to dead on these boards. And in one of these threads I did research about the surrender after the atomic bombs. Don't ask me to seek it back. But the generals were sabotaging the decision of the Emperor for surrender going to prevent the broadcasting by destroying the 78 tours record of the speech or was it to prevent the recording of the speech?
They discussed also that the Americans hadn't enough spare atomic bombs to bomb further and had to do it further conventionally.
Kind regards,
Paul. -
Message 13
Posted by Arnald Amalric (U14983291) on Friday, 28th October 2011
quote "Was the use of atomic force overkill so to speak akin to swatting mosquitoes with baseball bats. Japan I don't believe was going to rise up and overwelm the Allies at this point in 1945"
vesturiiiis,
no it wasn't overkill, in my opinion underkill.
If you wish to conjecture then how many American lifes would have been lost in an amphibious assault on Japan? And how many Japanese lifes?
I propose that far fewer lives were lost by atomic force than were destroyed.
Truman made a very hard decision to use the A Bomb and in my opinion a correct one. To use your analogy if your baseball bat will wipe out and kill the mosquitoes then use the baseball bat.
quote Did President Truman merely want to assert the USA's dominant role worldwide and give the Russian Bear a pause?
Yes and no. I would say that it is a hard burden of history to put on Truman that he is the only leader to have used atomic force. Hence the endless questions about his decision.
AA. -
Message 14
Posted by caveman1944 (U11305692) on Saturday, 29th October 2011
See People's WAr----World----French Indo China .
A man relates Mountbatten telling them not to believe what papers were saying
about the bomb ending the war. The Japs, he said, were in a terrible way without supplies, and in one case reduced to caniblism. The Jap whose surrender he took said he would order a surrender if heknew where they were.
IMO, it was used to try it out on peple with a view to seeing it's effects, especially as others would soon have it too.
Tthe man who related that story expressed his concern that nothing was reported .
So it was to save much loss of life ? Fancy all those civilians being sacrificed to save the lives of military men armed to the teeth.
John -
Message 15
Posted by EvanLyn (U15042225) on Thursday, 24th November 2011
I'm a Japanese university student, and born in Hiroshima. Do you think that Japanese people hate Americans? No! The fact America dropped an atomic bomb to Hiroshima is no more than the past. America was wrong, but Japan was also wrong. All Japanese hope that there are no atomic bombs in the world. Any reason doesn't allow using atomic bombs.
-
Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 24th November 2011
EvanLyn
Thank you for your post.. Where are you studying?
Re "hating America"- The USA did have a "Marshall Plan" for the rebuilding of Japan on similar lines to the European Recovery Programme - and perhaps in part conscious of the need to prevent the Domino Effect- fall of countries to Communism: and Japan embraced much of American culture..
At the same time (as I have probably written before on this thread) I recall when I read "Children of the A Bomb" written by the Primary School children who survived that tragedy- I felt that all of us whose childhood was in the shadow of that War, its end and the aftermath- felt in some ways all connected. Looking for a book to read on my shelves yesterday I noted that I still had my copy of "The Seeds of Horoshima" by Edita Morris, a sequel to her book "The Flowers of Hiroshima" that won the Albert Schweitzer Literary Award in 1963.
I was listening yesterday to a Radio Programme about the great kimono industry in Kyoto. One creator of those special garments apparently has been declared a national treasure- and he may spend a whole year making one kimono. He is c80 years old- and his sons have not learned the craft. The economic down-turn of the last couple of decades has hit the industry hard.
Cass
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or Β to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ iD
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ navigation
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ links
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Β© 2014 The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.