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

[Rigby5]

Until the Soviets declared war on Japan on August 8th, there no lack of communications between Japan and the Soviet Union, since the Soviets had not yet withdrawn their embassies, as the US had.
So all attempts by Japan to surrender had to go through the Soviet ambassador.
And we know from the "Potsdam Diaries" that Truman knew the Japanese were desperate to surrender, but only wanted some assurances for the Emperor, since he was a religious leader.
So anyone claiming Japan was not trying to do a full surrender months before the use of nuclear weapons, is lying.
Truman wrote in his diaries that he told Stalin to deliberately stall the Japanese surrender.
Anyone claiming we would have had to intercept radio messages is lying, because the Soviet ambassador had face to face contact with the Japanese leaders.
We knew that the only condition to full surrender was to preserve the Emperor, which we also realized was necessary and later agreed to anyway.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

WRONG!
Economic sanctions ARE most definitely illegal war crimes.
It was ratified by the US in the 1906 Geneva Conventions.
Civilian economic warfare is totally illegal.
Economic sanctions are not just acts of war, but criminal.

So answer the question? We should have kept supply the Japanese so they could murder millions of Chinese?

 

[RetiredGySgt]

That is wrong because the Japanese has Soviet embassies and talked to Soviets face to face when trying to surrender.
Sure were have intercepts, but it is clear from what Truman wrote in the "Potsdam Diaries", that Stalin told him outright that Japan was desperate to surrender, and Truman told him to play dumb and not respond quickly.
None of the details would have been in "intercepts" and anyone bringing up "intercepts" really has no idea at all what was really going on.

LOL right according to you the Embassy somehow knew what the Government wanted and its positions with absolutely no communications between them.

 

[Open Bolt]

Sorry Junior, but your ignorance is on you.

You certainly have a big mouth, but you can't back up any of your boastful talking by pointing out a single untrue statement in anything that I've said.

I, on the other hand, am able to point out untrue statements in your posts over and over and over again.

 

[Open Bolt]

It is difficult to understand the humanity of those harping on how justified incinerating women and children was, or is.

As logical fallacies go, appeals to melodrama are often the silliest.

Note, again, the factual reality that the atomic bombs were dropped on military targets.

There are any number of scenarios for alternative use of the bombs.

You mean the silly proposals that we do something other than bomb military targets in the country that we were actually at war with?

There are any number of arguments as to what would have been better.

No good ones.

The human race would be extinct right now (or at the very least, back in the stone age again) if the US and USSR had not had the example of Hiroshima to restrain them from nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

No one can deny that there were alternatives.

Like the silly proposals that we attack a country other than the one that we were actually at war with?

The fact is, not enough thought went into the enormous ramifications of this technology and its use.

That isn't a fact. They put enormous effort into doing just that.

As stated before, the bombs were used tactically, not strategically, given the place of the U.S. at the time.

No. Tactical bombing would have been when we saved up a bunch of atomic bombs and used them to clear the beaches ahead of our invasion.

Just getting some Japanese officials to sit down and formalize the realities on the ground did not change the fact that the war was over and Japan lay supine, defenseless and defeated.

That as well is not a fact.

Japan was still refusing to surrender, and they had two million soldiers and ten thousand kamikazes waiting to pounce on our invading forces.

No one here is going to change his mind now; it's all been said. Some don't care about the inhumanity of war, some may misunderstand it. Some of us see the use of the bombs this way as poor use at best and leave the humanitarian aspects apart. The total inability to even admit that any other path was open begs the question of intellectual honesty.

We all know that there were other paths open.

Yes, it would have been possible for us to bomb our own cities instead of bombing Japanese cities.

Doing such a thing would have been quite preposterous, but it is certainly possible that we could have done it.

All sorts of different paths could have been followed.

But we chose to follow the path of attacking military targets in the country that we were actually at war with.

Good for us.

Given what was done, what position to criticize would the U.S. be in if Russia were to use such weapons to 'win' their current 'war'?

There is now a global taboo against the use of nuclear weapons. There is an even stronger global taboo against the use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear-weapons state.

We would have no trouble condemning it and leading the rest of the world in a harsh response against Russia.

It would be wonderful if this could honestly be denied.

Doing so is quite easy, but it is a bit off topic for this thread.

I realize that for those who hate freedom and democracy, one lie about America is little different from another. But really, it's only atomic bomb based lies about America that are on topic here.

 

[Open Bolt]

That is wrong because the Japanese has Soviet embassies and talked to Soviets face to face when trying to surrender.
Sure were have intercepts, but it is clear from what Truman wrote in the "Potsdam Diaries", that Stalin told him outright that Japan was desperate to surrender, and Truman told him to play dumb and not respond quickly.
None of the details would have been in "intercepts" and anyone bringing up "intercepts" really has no idea at all what was really going on.

Fake news. Never happened.

All Japan did was ask the Soviets for permission to let Prince Konoye come and talk to them.

Since permission was never granted, Prince Konoye never went and talked to them, and the Soviets never even heard what Prince Konoye had to say to them.

But since at the time Japan was trying to escape the war without surrendering, if Prince Konoye had actually gone and talked to them, he would have talked about helping Japan to end the war in a draw (much like the Korean War later ended).

Until the Soviets declared war on Japan on August 8th, there no lack of communications between Japan and the Soviet Union, since the Soviets had not yet withdrawn their embassies, as the US had.
So all attempts by Japan to surrender had to go through the Soviet ambassador.

Japan was free to send their surrender requests through neutral embassies like those of Switzerland and Sweden.

And we know from the "Potsdam Diaries" that Truman knew the Japanese were desperate to surrender, but only wanted some assurances for the Emperor, since he was a religious leader.

Truman knew no such falsehood. Japan was trying to escape the war by ending it in a draw instead of surrendering.

So anyone claiming Japan was not trying to do a full surrender months before the use of nuclear weapons, is lying.

Not given the fact that Japan refused to surrender until after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.

Truman wrote in his diaries that he told Stalin to deliberately stall the Japanese surrender.

Truman did not say any such thing. Neither did he write in his diary about saying such a thing.

Anyone claiming we would have had to intercept radio messages is lying, because the Soviet ambassador had face to face contact with the Japanese leaders.

It's not like we had access to private discussions between the Soviet Ambassador and the Japanese government.

Not that it matters. The only thing that the Japanese government was saying to the Soviet Ambassador is: "Please let Prince Konoye come to the USSR and talk to your government."

We knew that the only condition to full surrender was to preserve the Emperor, which we also realized was necessary and later agreed to anyway.

This as well is untrue. We never agreed to Japan's condition.

Japan's condition was that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity. We naturally refused and told them that Hirohito would be subordinate to MacArthur.

 

[AZrailwhale]

No sense in getting testy, gunny. Again--the target was not the military base, it was the T-bridge at city hall. That was a civilian target. The point of the matter remains, it was an overkill that gave great insight to the use of the bomb. It doesn't remove the fact that it was unnecessary. As I said in a previous post, second guessing 75 years later does no good for anyone. War sucks, there are winners and losers in any conflict. It sucked to be Japan in Aug. 1945.

That wasn't a target, it was an AIMING POINT. That is a structure, or natural feature that is readily identifiable from the air. When you are dropping a bomb or bombs that have a destruction radius measured in hundreds of yards you aren't picky. In WWII "precision bombing" was a myth, bombers were lucky to hit within a mile of their aiming point from high altitude, especially over Japan with the jet stream to contend with.

 

[AZrailwhale]

"the city was selected because it was “the largest untouched target not on the 21st Bomber Command priority list,” according to the administration’s Target Committee.20 Hiroshima, in other words, did not have enough military production to justify an earlier conventional attack"

Those are your words. Hiroshima was a major naval base and army command center. Both, or either, made it a legitimate target.

 

[AZrailwhale]

WRONG!
Japan had desperately been TRYING to surrender and we refused to communicate with them directly, and pretended confusion with the surrender attempts through the Soviets.

The Japanese GOVERNMENT wasn't trying to surrender. Individuals with no official position, power, or permission from the government were trying to arrange surrender terms that were completely unacceptable to the Allies. The government's OFFICIAL position was a return to status quo ante December 6th, 1941, no war crimes trials, any disarmament to be conducted by the Japanese, under Japanese supervision and decided upon by the Japanese. The only territory the Japanese government was willing to give up was what was already controlled by the Allies.

 

[Unkotare]

Those are your words. ...

NO. Did you see the quotation marks you used?

 

[Unkotare]

The Japanese GOVERNMENT wasn't trying to surrender. ...

Wrong.

 

[Unkotare]

Many people react badly when a comfortable narrative is shattered. A real historian isn't so defensive and weak-minded.

^^^^^

 

[Unkotare]

People really should learn at least a basic level of information about the topics they get worked up about here. Just being insecure about long-held narratives that they have found comfortable since childhood is not serious discussion.

^^^^^^

 

[Flash]

Japan's condition was that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity. We naturally refused and told them that Hirohito would be subordinate to MacArthur.

We should have strung up Hirohito and left his body hanging until it rotted.

However, the US knew that would not make reconstruction of the country any easier. Wiser heads prevailed.

 

[Rigby5]

Everything that I've said is true.



Fake news. Never happened.



We "knew" no such falsehood. What Japan wanted was to end the war in a draw without surrendering.



We had no control over whether Japan surrendered.

Had we such control, we would have had Japan surrender to us in 1941.



We had no such interest.



Hiroshima was a huge military center with tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers. It was Japan's primary military port, and the port that launched all their invasions of neighboring countries.

Hiroshima had more soldiers than any Japanese city other than Tokyo (which was much much larger). Hiroshima had the highest soldier/civilian ratio of any of Japan's major cities.

Hiroshima was also the headquarters in charge of repelling our coming invasion.

The second atomic bomb was intended for Kokura Arsenal, which was a massive (4100 feet by 2000 feet) factory complex that built all of Japan's light machine guns, heavy machine guns, 20mm antiaircraft guns, and the ammo for all those guns.

Unfortunately due to a lot of bad luck the second atomic bomb was diverted to the secondary target, Nagasaki, which was a shipbuilding town that made some of Japan's largest warships.

At Nagasaki, the second atomic bomb destroyed the torpedo factory that had made the specialized torpedoes designed for defeating Pearl Harbor's natural defenses.



Hiroshima was chosen as an atomic target early in the bombing campaign when only a handful of cities had been destroyed. Thereafter it was off limits to conventional bombing.

Nagasaki had a natural immunity to conventional bombing because it was hard to locate on the radar that was used to guide our massive nighttime incendiary raids.



Circular logic is bad logic.

We did target military bases and weapons factories.



The destruction of the torpedo factory was quite thorough. The destruction of the military headquarters was as well.

20,000 Japanese soldiers were killed at Hiroshima.



Not given that actual fact that Japan had ten thousand kamikazes waiting to pounce on our invasion.



No reality there. Japan had ten thousand kamikazes ready to pounce on our invading forces.



The ten thousand kamikaze planes had enough fuel for a single one-way flight. They were training people to pilot them and target troop transports.



The state of their interceptor fleet is no reflection on the ten thousand kamikazes that they had waiting for us.



Actually we knew about the two million soldiers they had waiting to repel our invasion.



If that is what defeated them, it's funny how they didn't surrender.



We were not the ones who were drawing it out. We had no control over Japan's refusal to surrender.



Your holocaust denial is repugnant and despicable.

A minimum of 100,000 people every month were dying under Japanese occupation.



No such lies.

And you might want to consider some of the various genocides before you start loosely throwing around accusations about the worst war crimes in history.



Yes they did. Their first surrender offer came only after both atomic bombs had already been dropped.



Fake news. Never happened.



That is preposterous nonsense.

If economic sanctions were war crimes, we could have lawfully reacted to the 1970s oil embargoes by invading the Middle East and taking their oil by force.



This is silly. The ability to flatten an entire city is one of the most notable properties of a nuclear explosion.



That was a lot farther than the lethal radiation extended.



That is incorrect. Explosive shock is the main effect.



I've never seen a breakdown of radiation deaths versus non-radiation deaths.



That is incorrect. We were planning to invade in a few months if Japan had kept refusing to surrender.

Everything you said was wrong.
Clearly the Japanese did not want to surrender in 1941 because they still had food, fuel, and ability to fight.
But that quickly ended after 1943 when we mined the waters between Japan and Asia.
From then on, Japan was desperate to surrender, and it was only our reluctance to let them surrender, that kept the war going.

The atomic bombs had essentially no effect at all on the Japanese desire to surrender, and they were insignificant.
We killed far more with every conventional air attack than we did with any atomic attack.

What cause the Japanese to end the war was the mining of the waters to Asia in 1943.
{...

U.S. MINES INDOCHINA WATERS​

TODAY
Honolulu, Hawaii · October 29, 1943

In World War II’s Pacific Theater, sea mines—explosive underwater devices that damaged, sank, or deterred Japanese warships, submarines, and maritime commerce—were weapons that had difficulty gaining the same respect as guns, bombs, and torpedoes enjoyed in the U.S. arsenal. Over time, however, a small number of mining advocates in both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army Air Forces influenced their service bosses enough to ensure the growth of offensive mine-laying, equipment development, and combat experience.
On this date in 1943 U.S. submarines began mining the waters off French Indochina. The following March the U.S. Navy mounted a direct aerial mining attack on Japanese shipping on Palau Island in the Western Pacific, which stopped 32 Japanese ships from escaping Palau’s harbor. Combined with bombing and strafing attacks, the operation sank or damaged 36 ships.
The most successful mining operations were those conducted by the Allied air forces laying aerial minefields. Beginning with a very successful attack on the Yangon River in Burma (Myanmar) in February 1943, B‑24 Liberators, PBY Catalinas, and other available bomber aircraft took part in localized mining operations in the China Burma India (CBI) Theater and in the Southwest Pacific (Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo, New Guinea, and the western Solomon Islands). British and Royal Australian air forces carried out 60 percent of the sorties and the U.S. Army Air Forces and U.S. Navy carried out the balance. U.S. Adm. Thomas C. Kinkaid, who directed nearly all RAAF mining operations in the CBI, wrote in July 1944 that “aerial mining operations were of the order of 100 times as destructive to the enemy as an equal number of bombing missions against land targets.”
The U.S. mining effort against the Japanese Home Islands proved very successful, closing major ports like Hiroshima on Western Honshū, the largest Home Island, for days. At best, the Japanese succeeded in sweeping only about 50 percent of American acoustic mines (they measured sound of certain frequencies). Pressure mines, the most commonly used against Japan near the end of the war, were even more difficult to sweep. By war’s end, more than 25,000 U.S.-laid sea mines were still in place. Over the next 30 years, more than 500 minesweepers were damaged or sunk in continuing clearance efforts.
...}

It is downright silly to claim there were military objectives in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, because there really were no more military objectives anywhere in Japan, as they had all already been obliterated,
There were NO Japanese aircraft capable of trying to intercept a single bomber.
We had total free will to the air, anyway or place we wanted.

And trying to be deliberately obtuse does not make you seem very smart.
When OPEC sets prices, that is NOT "economic sanctions".
Economic sanctions are when you prohibit trade with others by the use of force, like we did to Iraq in 2002, to Cuba, or recently to Russia.
The US is prohibiting others from civilian trade, and that is a totally illegal war crime.
It was illegal to sink Japanese ships carrying civilian food back to Japan during WWII.

Your claim that there was constant deaths from Japanese occupation is totally false.
The main cause of death near the end of the war was the US destruction of shipping.

It does not take a physicist to understand that 95% of atomic bomb deaths are from radiation.
Almost no one dies instantly.
It is essentially illegal chemical warfare, since they die in agony, months later, from radiation poisoning.
However, I do have a degree in Physics, so you should take my word for it.

 

[Unkotare]

...
Clearly the Japanese did not want to surrender in 1941 because they still had food, fuel, and ability to fight.
.

..
They didn't have any of that by then.

 

[Unkotare]

...

It does not take a physicist to understand that 95% of atomic bomb deaths are from radiation.
Almost no one dies instantly.
....

In Hiroshima, 80,000 people died instantly.

 

[Rigby5]

Japan's condition was that Hirohito retain unlimited dictatorial power as Japan's living deity. We naturally refused and told them that Hirohito would be subordinate to MacArthur.

That is a lie.
Since Hirohito was the religious leader for most of Japan, they just did not want him on trial or executed.
And really he did nothing illegal.
So the US totally agreed, and could have agreed a year earlier and ended the war then.

 

[Rigby5]

In Hiroshima, 80,000 people died instantly.

The radiation probably still took seconds to kill, if not minutes or hours.
The point being that it was not the explosive shock wave that killed the majority.
It was a horrific death that violated the Geneva conventions.

 

[Concerned American]

T

That wasn't a target, it was an AIMING POINT. That is a structure, or natural feature that is readily identifiable from the air. When you are dropping a bomb or bombs that have a destruction radius measured in hundreds of yards you aren't picky. In WWII "precision bombing" was a myth, bombers were lucky to hit within a mile of their aiming point from high altitude, especially over Japan with the jet stream to contend with.

That bomb was within 25 yards of "aiming point"