The Nuking of Nagasaki: Even More Immoral and Unnecessary than Hiroshima

[Open Bolt]

You can deny the Earth is round all day, but it'll still be round. The fact that MacArthur, Clarke, Feller, Nimitz, Grew, Bard, Leahy, etc., etc., not to mention most of the dozens of scientists who worked on the bomb, opposed nuking Japan has been documented and discussed in hundreds of scholarly studies.

Not one of those people advised Mr. Truman not to use the atomic bombs against Japan.

 

[Open Bolt]

You again simply ignore the fact that most of Japan's leaders were trying to surrender.

That's not a fact.

The military faction (the faction that was actually in charge) was opposed to surrender.

You just keep ignoring this with this silly and grade-school simplistic line that "they did not surrender."

That they didn't surrender is a pretty important point.

Them not surrendering meant that the war was still on, and we had every right to keep attacking them.

They were trying to surrender.

If so, they weren't trying hard enough. We were not hearing any surrender offers.

And we knew they were trying to surrender.

No we didn't.

But they--the moderates--needed to overcome the hardliners, who, though a minority, could paralyze and even bring down the government if any one of their two cabinet members refused to vote for surrender or if they resigned and their service refused to appoint a successor.

So in other words, the government of Japan had not decided to surrender.

Most of their leaders were trying to surrender and had been trying for several weeks, but they could not overcome the hardliners because, thanks to Truman, the hardliners could put forward two powerful arguments that the moderates could not overcome, i.e., that the emperor would be deposed if Japan surrendered and that the Soviet Union would remain neutral until the neutrality pact ended in April 1946.

No. It was because the hardliners flatly opposed surrender until the Emperor ordered them to support surrender.

 

[Open Bolt]

And here is part of Dr. Sherry’s eloquent condemnation of Truman’s decision to nuke without trying negotiation:

Since precisely this issue of the emperor’s fate held up surrender even after Hiroshima and Russia’s entry into the war, until Byrnes and Truman offered firmer assurances, their decision at Potsdam has been widely and rightly condemned as the most tragic blunder in American surrender policy, even by insiders who otherwise supported the bomb’s use. There can be no certainty would have accepted in July what it submitted to in August, but the chance was there, and as Ralph Bard had argued earlier, the risks of pursuing it were small. Moreover, the moral risks in the opposite direction, in pursuing an atomic solution before attempting to break the diplomatic impasse, were large. Michael Walzer has explained them persuasively:​

“If killing millions (or many thousands) of men and women was militarily necessary for their conquest and overthrow, then it was morally necessary—in order not to kill those people—to settle for something less. . . . If people have a right not to be forced to fight, they also have a right not to be forced to continue fighting beyond the point when the war might justly be concluded. Beyond that point, there can be no supreme emergencies, no arguments about military necessity, no cost-accounting in human lives. To press the war further than that is to re-commit the crime of aggression. In the summer of 1945, the victorious Americans owed the Japanese people an experiment in negotiation. To use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting such an experiment, was a double crime.”​

Given Japan's refusal to do anything other than pursue Soviet mediation, it can be safely assumed that they would never have listened to our terms no matter what they were.

Of course, the double crime extended beyond use of the atomic bomb. A larger failure in surrender policy had sanctioned the razing of Japan’s cities. (pp. 329, 334-335)​

No crime and no failure. The bombing was a big success.

Whatever lame, dishonest attempts some might make to paint the Japanese as a formidable foe in August 1945 because they managed to shoot down a plane and sink a ship that month,

Don't forget the thousands of kamikazes and millions of soldiers they had waiting to greet our invasion.

there can be no denying that Truman did not even try to explore the peace feelers that he knew Japan was putting out, even though he knew from Japanese intercepts that Emperor Hirohito himself wanted to surrender as soon as possible. Truman did not even try to negotiate privately, through third parties, to explore the peace opening that he knew from intercepts was there to be explored.

Wrong.

Besides the fact that the government of Japan was not putting out those feelers (and the US government knew this), Truman did pursue those feelers just in case they would lead to actual contact with the people in power in Japan.

It was Japan who killed off those peace feelers.

Truman not only refused to hold any kind of negotiations with the Japanese, but he refused to advise them that he would not depose the emperor if they surrendered. He also refused to alert the Japanese that Russia would soon be entering the Pacific War against them. These two crucial pieces of information would have been of enormous value to the Japanese moderates and would have deprived the hardliners of their two main--and really their only--arguments against surrender.

The notion that the hardliners were relying on those arguments is ahistorical. The hardliners simply opposed surrender and voted against it.

It is possible that "knowing that the Soviets were about to declare war" would have disabused the peace faction of any hope of Soviet mediation and thereby prompted the Emperor to order a surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped.

It is also possible that humanity would be extinct right now if the US and USSR did not have the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to deter them from nuclear war.

 

[Open Bolt]

Okay, now let's deal with your claims about Eisenhower’s statements on nuking Japan. I suspect your claims are based on Robert Maddox’s book Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism. It is ironic that Maddox thinks of himself as battling “revisionism” when in fact the majority of scholars who have published on this subject disagree with him.

Most scholars do not disagree with Mr. Maddox.

To give you some idea of how extreme he is on the issue, Maddox stridently applauds the censoring and cancellation of the modestly objective and carefully worded text of the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in 1995, even though dozens of leading historians—including historians from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Ohio State, Dartmouth, Georgetown, and Stanford—condemned the censoring and removal of the text.

The exhibit was filled with anti-American lies. Opposing such lies is hardly evidence of extremism.

When dealing with the fact that General Omar Bradley confirmed in his memoir that Ike voiced objection to nuking Japan to Stimson and Truman, Maddox argues that that part of Bradley’s book was fabricated by Bradley’s co-author!

And indeed it was fabricated.

The account in Bradley's book is contrary to known facts.

It is also contrary to Ike's own account of his opposition to the bombs.

Ike clearly describes that the conversation about the atomic bombs happened in a private dinner with Stimson, not in a general meeting with lots of other people including Truman himself.

Perhaps sensing that his claim that Bradley’s confirming account was fabricated might seem doubtful,

No fears on that account. The Bradley account is an obvious fabrication.

Maddox is forced to admit that one of Stimson’s aides recorded that Stimson and Eisenhower did in fact discuss the atomic bomb when the two had lunch at Ike’s HQ on July 27, even though Stimson’s diary for that day says nothing about it, which should warn us about making arguments from silence.

Forced to admit??

Maddox has no trouble admitting to facts.

This data from Stimson's aid is more confirmation that the Bradley account is a fabrication.

Maddox also noted that July 27 was after the final orders to drop the atomic bombs had already been sent out to the military and Stimson had left Potsdam to fly home.

Stimson was not in the same room with Truman again until after Hiroshima had already been bombed.

Even if Ike had been convincing, he was too late to stop the atomic bombs from being dropped.

And Ike's own account makes it pretty clear that he failed to convince Stimson of anything at all.

In reply to Maddox and other Truman defenders, Professor Gar Alperovitz has said the following:

Alperovitz is a known fraud.

(B) It is sometimes urged that there is no record of any of the military men directly advising President Truman not to use the atomic bomb--and that this must mean that they felt its use was justified at the time. However, this is speculation. The fact is there is also no record of military leaders advising President Truman to use the bomb:
We simply have little solid information one way or the other on what was said by top military leaders on the key question at the time: There are very few direct contemporaneous records on this subject. And there is certainly no formal recommendation that the atomic bomb be used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Either way, there is no record of anyone ever advising Mr. Truman against using the atomic bombs.

Here, for instance, is how General George C. Marshall put it in a discussion more than two months before Hiroshima was destroyed (McCloy memo, May 29, 1945):

... he thought these weapons might first be used against straight military objectives such as a large naval installation and then if no complete result was derived from the effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to leave--telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such centers.... Every effort should be made to keep our record of warning clear. We must offset by such warning methods the opprobrium which might follow from an ill-considered employment of such force. [THE DECISION, p. 53.]​

That is exactly what we did do.

Hiroshima was Japan's primary military port.

Subsequent atomic bombs were aimed at enemy war industry.

Leaflets were dropped warning people to flee before we bombed.

The President's Chief of Staff, Admiral Leahy--the man who presided over meetings of the Joint Chiefs--noted in his diary of June 18, 1945 (seven weeks prior to the bombing of Hiroshima):

It is my opinion at the present time that a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provisions for America's defense against future trans-Pacific aggression. [THE DECISION, p. 324.]​

(Leahy also stated subsequently something which should be obvious--namely that the Chief of Staff regularly made his views known to the President. His well-documented comments in a meeting with the President urging assurances for the Emperor this same day--June 18--are only one indication of this. Although we have no records of their private conversations, we know that the two men met to discuss matters of state every morning at 9:45 a.m. [THE DECISION, pp. 324-6.])

He was right. We got Japan to surrender on satisfactory terms.

There is also substantial, but less direct evidence (including some which seems to have come from President Truman himself) that General Arnold argued explicitly that the atomic bomb was not needed [THE DECISION, pp. 322-4; 335-7]--and as noted above, that Arnold instructed his deputy Lieutenant General Ira C. Eaker that although he did not wish to press the point, he did not believe the bomb was needed. As also noted above, in his memoirs Arnold stated that "it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." [THE DECISION, p. 334.] (In this connection, as we shall discuss in Part III, it is commonly forgotten that by the time Hiroshima was bombed orders had already been given to alter targeting priorities so as to down-play city bombing. Although there were some difficulties in the field, the new priorities were on the verge of being moved into implementation as the war ended. [THE DECISION, p. 342-3.]) (Decision: Part I)[/INDENT]

Did I mention that Alperovitz is a known fraud?

Alperovitz is maliciously misrepresenting what General Arnold said.

 

[Mushroom]

Those facts are not nonsense, and you have not refuted them.

I find those that try to scream otherwise know nothing of early Showa era Japan, or who actually made the decisions.

I bet none have ever heard of the Supreme War Council (also known as the "Big Six"), who was on it, and how they voted each time both before and after the bombs were dropped. They seem to think that they were sitting around trying to find ways to get the US to accept their surrender, which is anything but what happened.

They likely also never heard of the Taisei Yokusankai, or "Imperial Rule Assistance Association", which was the Japanese version of the Fascist and NSDAP parties. They know about a thimbleful of what actually led to the war, and what caused it to end. But they are so full of their own self-importance that they will scream incessantly about how right they are. I mostly find it dull, as it means that for the last decade I have been pointing out the exact same things over and over again. But it means nothing, they always seem to think they win every time it comes up.

Even most funny was that the story of the "contest to behead 100 people with a sword" had largely been forgotten to history once the two that took part in the contest were executed. Most even believing it had never happened, and was entirely fictional on old anti-Japanese stories. Until a history professor at a Tokyo University actually uncovered the original newspaper reports in two major Japanese newspapers (one in Osaka, the other in Tokyo). It went on for over 2 weeks, and was covered in the sports section between November and December 1937 like it was a baseball pennant race.

Even going to extra innings of 150 beheadings when they were tied.

That was how callous the culture was to outsiders at the time. Does anybody reasonably think the Big Six would not have been just as callous to their own people?

 

[Mushroom]

Given Japan's refusal to do anything other than pursue Soviet mediation, it can be safely assumed that they would never have listened to our terms no matter what they were.

Oh, it is even more telling when one examines the messages sent back and forth between Foreign Minister Togo, and the Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Naotake Sato. The US knew what was being sent back and forth between them, because they had broken the diplomatic code years earlier. And the exchange between the two was quite interesting. With Togo and the Government insisting that they would accept nothing but peace on their terms. And that those terms were absolute and non-negotiable

Sato even tried to get the Government to agree to return land conquered during the war, and could not even get a firm answer on that! With the most Tokyo being willing to go was to any such territories being demilitarized yet under Japanese administration. Frustrated at the total unwillingness to negotiate on anything, Ambassador Sato sent a blistering communique to Foreign Minister Togo lambasting him for sending him on a mission that was obviously designed to fail.

If the Japanese empire is really faced with the necessity of terminating the war, we must first of all make up our minds to terminate the war.

And finally, Togo admitted that there were no terms, because the Government still thought they were winning the war. In one of the last messages, Sato charged Togo with sending him nothing but "pretty little phrases" to use to start negotiations;. Nothing else.

The US was more than aware of these negotiations, and was reading this back and forth as soon as it was happening. They knew that Ambassador Sato was frustrated, and even he knew that Japan was not serious about surrender, his mission was mostly a stall tactic and nothing else but.

There was never going to be a "Soviet Mediation", and even the Soviets knew that. Which is why Stalin ordered his Foreign Minsters to simply stall them. And of all three sides in this, only one really wanted peace.

Japan wanted war, because they knew their fortunes would turn around and eventually they would win.

The Soviets wanted war, so they could reclaim their territory lost between the end of the Boxer Rebellion and their latest border clashes. And if the war was ended before they got involved that never would have happened.

Only the US and UK seemed to want peace. They wanted it over and done with, so they could both go home.

 

[AZrailwhale]

Wrong.
Nukes are and always were illegal chemical and thermal weapons that are banned.
Bullets do not have to "cleanly kill" in that they usually just go right through, with only a temporary wound.
That is why hollow point and dumdum expanding bullets are illegal.
Gun shots in war are almost never lethal anymore.

But more to the point, NATO trying to put nukes on the Russian border is in violation of several treaties, and is as bad as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are you suggesting that the US was criminal for forcing the nukes out of Cuba?

Wrong.
Nukes are and always were illegal chemical and thermal weapons that are banned.
Bullets do not have to "cleanly kill" in that they usually just go right through, with only a temporary wound.
That is why hollow point and dumdum expanding bullets are illegal.
Gun shots in war are almost never lethal anymore.

But more to the point, NATO trying to put nukes on the Russian border is in violation of several treaties, and is as bad as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are you suggesting that the US was criminal for forcing the nukes out of Cuba?

You are incredibly stupid and ignorant. Nukes aren’t chemical weapons, neither are they “thermal weapons” whatever they are. Nukes are not illegal. At least nineteen hundred americans have been killed by enemy action in Afghanistan. Of those over half died from bullet wounds. On one weekend, seventeen people were killed by “celebratory gunfire” in Kabul alone. Since you are so slow and ignorant, “celebratory gunfire” is idiots like you shooting aimlessly up in the air. A “temporary wound” can take months to heal with the victim in pain for a large portion of that time.
NATO is not interested in putting nukes On Russia’s borders. It already has nukes in easy range of every city and military base in Russia. What Ukraine wanted were DEFENSIVE anti-aircraft and anti-missile missiles in it’s own territory to protect itself from Russia. Events have clearly shown they were necessary.
The reason ration of deaths from gunshot wounds in combat have dropped is that battlefield medicine has gotten so good.

 

[Dayton3]

LMFAO…you are actually fine with mass murdering defenseless women and children. You’re a sick fuck.

Personal insult means your arguments are intellectually bankrupt.

I said nothing about being "fine" with mass murdering defenseless women and children.

1) What would make you consider those women and children and being "defensible"?
2) As I've pointed out, in war time most of those killed are in fact "defenseless". By way of example, most aircraft shot down in air to air combat are shot down by opponents that they never saw.

3) Likewise in land combat most deaths are due to artillery. Which those killed never even see firing.

 

[Open Bolt]

It wasn’t necessary to end the war.

Irrelevant. We still dropped the atomic bombs with the goal of making Japan surrender.

That leaves just the revenge.

No it doesn't. We dropped the atomic bombs to try to make Japan surrender.

Killing over 100,000 civilians in atomic incineration and its aftermath, and throwing AMERICANS into concentration camps in revenge against a military enemy? Is that what you think America is about?

Revenge is a perfectly reasonable reason for people to be happy about the atomic bombs.

 

[Open Bolt]

There was a reason that when Truman first told the American people about the nuking of Hiroshima, he falsely claimed that Hiroshima was a “military base,” not just a military target, but a military base.

Nothing false about it. Hiroshima was the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

Actually, of course, it was neither.

Wrong. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers.

If Hiroshima was a “military base,” or even a “military target,” then so is every American city with a sea port, an airport, and a contingent of military reservists and/or National Guard soldiers.

Hiroshima had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any major Japanese city, and held more soldiers than any Japanese city besides Tokyo.

the troops there were in garrison and constituted a small fraction of the city’s population;

There were still a lot of them.

Not one American soldier would have died in the Pacific in August if Truman had not ignored Japan's peace feelers and what he knew about them from intercepts.

Truman didn't ignore the peace feelers. It was Japan that killed off the peace feelers.

Killing hundreds of thousands of women and children is not the American way and is not what America is about.

That's why we dropped the atomic bombs on military targets.

The American way is to hit military targets, if you must use force, not bomb virtually defenseless cities filled mostly with seniors, women, and children.

Again, that's why we dropped the atomic bombs on military targets.

* In 1955, Eisenhower wrote to friend and businessman William Pawley about his discussion on the bomb with Stimson:

On the other hand, when I suggested to Secretary of War Stimson, who was then in Europe, that we avoid using the atomic bomb, he stated that it was going to be used because it would save hundreds of thousands of American lives. (Eisenhower papers, Eisenhower to Pawley, April 9, 1955, in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, p. 354)​

It's a shame that Alperovitz is known for fraudulently misquoting people, because if that quote is accurate then that is evidence that the high casualty estimates were real.

Of course, we already know that the high casualty estimates were real, but it would be one more piece of evidence.

Now, Elektra, getting back to your “scum” comment, guess which “scum” said the following:

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.​

This was the conclusion of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) (USSBS report, p. 26), which was led by such “scum” and “commies” as:
- Paul Nitze, who went on to serve as Secretary of the Navy and Assistant Secretary of Defense, and who was chosen by President Ronald Reagan to be his chief negotiator at the SALT talks.

Scum indeed. The Strategic Bombing Survey was fake.

"Unprovoked"? FDR was strangling Japan with increasingly harsh sanctions. Japan made a sincere effort to reach a compromise with FDR, including an offer to withdraw from southern Indochina, which was FDR's pretext for the oil embargo. Every time Japan offered another concession, FDR would add more conditions. The Japanese realized that FDR was determined to force Japan to fight.
Since you claim to be a "patriot," you might be interested to know that Japan was staunchly anti-communist and pro-free enterprise and pro-private property. Japan moved into Manchuria to check Soviet and Chinese Communist influence there and to create a buffer zone between Japan and Communism.
Japan plainly told FDR that it was ready to ditch its pact with Germany in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions, but FDR said no. Also, isn't it interesting that FDR wanted the Japanese to guarantee that they would not attack the Soviet Union?!
Japan had been our ally in WW I. Japan was the most westernized nation in Asia and also had the best economy because it was based on free enterprise and a fierce respect for private property.

Your support for Japan's genocide against their Asian neighbors is horrific.

 

[gipper]

Nothing false about it. Hiroshima was the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.



Wrong. Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers.



Hiroshima had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any major Japanese city, and held more soldiers than any Japanese city besides Tokyo.



There were still a lot of them.



Truman didn't ignore the peace feelers. It was Japan that killed off the peace feelers.



That's why we dropped the atomic bombs on military targets.



Again, that's why we dropped the atomic bombs on military targets.



It's a shame that Alperovitz is known for fraudulently misquoting people, because if that quote is accurate then that is evidence that the high casualty estimates were real.

Of course, we already know that the high casualty estimates were real, but it would be one more piece of evidence.



Scum indeed. The Strategic Bombing Survey was fake.



Your support for Japan's genocide against their Asian neighbors is horrific.

All wrong.

Mike will be along shortly let’s hope to destroy your ignorance.

 

[Open Bolt]

All wrong.

Nope. Hiroshima was the military headquarters in charge of repelling our invasion.

Hiroshima held thousands of soldiers. Hiroshima held more soldiers than any Japanese city other than Tokyo.

Truman didn't ignore the Japanese peace feelers. It was Japan who killed off the peace feelers.

Gar Alperovitz is a known fraud.

The Strategic Bombing Survey is a known fraud.

If that quote from Ike can be verified, it will indeed be one more piece of evidence showing that the US government feared high casualties from an invasion.

Japan's genocide of their Asian neighbors was indeed horrific.

Mike will be along shortly let’s hope to destroy your ignorance.

No such ignorance. Note the ease with which I debunk all of your untrue claims.

 

[Mac-7]

Japan unquestionably started the war

but they were stupid

they accomplished nothing by bombing Pearl Harbor except ensure their own destruction

 

[Open Bolt]

I take it you didn't bother to read any of the posts herein where I document Japan's prostrate condition?

Japan had millions of soldiers and thousands of kamikazes ready to pounce on our invasion.

There was no need to invade Japan, nor to nuke Japan, to end the war.

If Japan had kept refusing to surrender, we would have kept nuking them, and we would have invaded them, no matter how much you don't like that fact.

We know from internal memos that even the War Department knew that the "half a million" estimate was a wild exaggeration.

It was a plausible enough figure that that is the number of purple hearts that they ordered for the invasion.

Even most of the few scholars who still defend Truman's nuking of Japan have admitted that the half-a-million figure was baseless.

Some may question the estimate of half a million dead (although it was a real estimate). No one questions the estimate of half a million casualties.

No, nuking two cites was not "the right thing to do." It was a war crime of gigantic proportions.

Wrong. Bombing military targets is entirely legitimate.

It is not "Monday morning quarterbacking" to point out that Truman did not need to nuke Japan.

Actually "Monday morning quarterbacking" is exactly what it is.

You are criticizing realtime decisions with the advantage of hindsight.

Dozens of people inside the government and in the Manhattan Project voiced opposition to nuking Japan before Truman did it.

Wrong again. Not one person advised Truman against using the atomic bombs.

And within months of the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, voices from both conservative and liberal camps began to raise doubts about the necessity and morality of Truman's action.

More "Monday morning quarterbacking".

 

[Open Bolt]

Well, this proves that you have no clue what you're talking about. Even most pro-Truman-nuking scholars admit that 500,000 was an invalid, baseless estimate.

Scholars acknowledge that casualty figures of 500,000 were entirely plausible.

Do you have any response to the fact that even internal War Department memos dismissed the 500K estimate as a severe exaggeration? Or do you just not care?

That is actually the number of purple heart medals that the military ordered for the invasion.

I stumbled across this fascinating article on how American and Japanese textbooks discuss Hiroshima. The article is titled “Re-visiting Hiroshima: The Role of US and Japanese History Textbooks in the Construction of National Memory,” and it was written by Dr. Keith Crawford, the head of educational research at Edge Hill College in England, and was published in the Asia Pacific Education Review in 2003 (Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 108-117). Here is a telling excerpt from it:

There is evidence that voices in the US were raised against the decision to drop the bomb but none of this appears in the US texts.​

The most telling thing is its inaccuracy. No one ever advised Truman against using the atomic bombs.

Ellis Zacharias, Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, wrote “What prevented them [the Japanese] from suing for peace … was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender” (Ellis, 1945, p. 17).​

Zacharias was wrong. What prevented Japan from suing for peace was the military faction voting against surrender, which they did until the Emperor ordered them to vote for surrender.

So you say that Hasegawa says that Truman was "not at fault"?! Really?! Uh, then who ordered the nuke attacks?!

The nuclear attacks are not the sort of thing that anyone would be at fault for. We were defending ourselves.

Whether one believes Truman acted out of malice and vengeance or out of ignorance and incompetence, the fact remains that he should not have nuked Japan.

That's not a fact at all.

Truman very much should have nuked Japan. We had every right to defend ourselves.

You show yourself to be far out of the scholarly mainstream when you argue that at least 500,000 soldiers would have died in an invasion of Japan. As has been documented in dozens of books, and as can be seen in declassified internal government memos, even the War Department knew that the 500K estimate was ridiculous and baseless.

It is possible that they disagreed with estimates 500,000 deaths (although such estimates did in fact exist).

But they didn't seem to have much objection to estimates of 500,000 casualties, given that that is the number of purple hearts that they ordered for the invasion.

 

[Open Bolt]

We did not have to nuke Japan. Debate over.

Who cares? We did nuke them.

Japan didn't have to attack Pearl Harbor or subject our POWs to the Bataan Death March.

Debate over indeed.

The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It

Japan didn't offer to surrender until after Nagasaki.

 

[Open Bolt]

* Time and time again, Truman aided the Japanese hardliners and hindered the efforts of the peace advocates by refusing to assure them about the emperor's fate and by refusing to advise them that the Soviets would enter the war if they didn't surrender.

Nonsense. The military faction did not need help from Truman, and did not receive help from Truman.

The military faction merely voted against surrender until the Emperor finally ordered them to change their vote.

* Truman refused to explore any of Japan's peace feelers or to act on the information about Japan's peace feelers that he obtained from intercepts,

Wrong. Even though Truman knew that the peace feelers were illegitimate, he did pursue them, just in case they could lead to a real contact with the people in power in Japan.

It was Japan that killed off the peace feelers.

even though he knew that the only real holdup was the status of the emperor.

Wrong again. That was not the only real holdup. And Truman knew that it wasn't the only real holdup.

* Even a pro-nuke hack like McGeorge Bundy agreed that nuking Nagasaki just three days after Hiroshima was wrong.

The only real problem with it is, it should have been a same day strike.

In August 1945, Japan was like a man who had been provoked into throwing the first punch,

Except they hadn't. Japan chose to throw the first punch.

who had been thoroughly beaten in the ensuing fight, who was ready to surrender, and who was only asking for one reasonable condition as his terms for surrender.

Except they hadn't. Japan was still refusing to surrender.

For every 1 punch Japan was landing, we were landing 20. For every one of our soldiers the Japanese were managing to kill, we were killing at least five or six of their soldiers, plus thousands of Japanese civilians with our aerial bombing and naval bombardment.
At that point, basic decency and humanity should have kicked in and we should have explored every peaceful option to achieve a negotiated surrender.

Which is exactly what we did do.

 

[BS Filter]

Japan offered to surrender with conditions. The second bomb took care of that offer. Case closed.

 

[Open Bolt]

This is fairy tale material. Throughout history, nations have taken sanctions very seriously. When you freeze another nation's assets, cut off most of their oil supply, and deny them access to other vital raw materials, that nation will view those actions as hostile and dangerous, and, if they can, will most likely resort to force if diplomacy fails to undo them.

Based on your logic we have the right to conquer the Middle East and take all their oil.

When the Soviets carried out all kinds of brutal deeds, occupied countries, etc., why didn't FDR do to them what he did to the Japanese?

That the Soviets were evil only started to become apparent under Truman.

And there was only so much that we could do.

And what was the big deal with Japan occupying parts of southern Indochina? France had occupied and taken over all of Indochina, and had killed far more Indochinese than the Japanese did when they came in, yet no Western nation imposed sanctions on France. So why did FDR freeze Japan's assets when Japan moved into southern Indochina?

Gosh. Maybe it was the genocide that Japan was committing.

Second, your question about the "authorized" peace offer that Truman was "supposed to explore" is disingenuous and avoids the point that most of Japan's high-ranking government officials favored surrender weeks before Hiroshima but could not yet overcome the hardliners' opposition and thus could not bring about a situation where the emperor could break a surrender-decision deadlock.

No. Japan's high ranking officials were those hardliners who opposed surrender.

That is why they were able to succeed in their opposition to surrender.

And why were the peace advocates unable to overcome the hardliners? Because the hardliners kept falling back on their main argument: that surrender would lead to the emperor's removal.

No. Because the hardliners opposed surrender and voted against it.

Truman could have broken the hardliners' backs if he had just given Japan assurance that the emperor would not be deposed,

Not in the real world.

In the real world, the hardliners would have kept voting against surrender until the Emperor ordered them otherwise.

Only after the Soviets invaded did the hardliners agree to convene the Big Six, and only then could the peace advocates arrange for a meeting where the emperor could break a surrender-debate deadlock.

So in other words, this nonsense about Japan surrendering earlier if we modified our terms, is nonsense.

 

[Open Bolt]

Japan offered to surrender with conditions. The second bomb took care of that offer. Case closed.

There is an issue with your timeline. Here is the order of events:
August 6: Hiroshima
August 9: Nagasaki
August 10: Japan offers to surrender with conditions