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

[P@triot]

Here is a sensible explanation of the alternatives that were available to Truman in August 1945, alternatives that did not involve killing over 200,000 civilians and seriously injuring thousands of others with two atomic bombs

But those “alternatives” didn’t include ending the war. The atomic bombs did. Now move along, Paid Russian Troll. You’re not dividing Americans here because nobody believes you are actually an American.

I don’t blame the left for your ignorant troll posts. I blame Putin.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Here is a sensible explanation of the alternatives that were available to Truman in August 1945, alternatives that did not involve killing over 200,000 civilians and seriously injuring thousands of others with two atomic bombs

But those “alternatives” didn’t include ending the war.

Uh, yes they did.

The atomic bombs did.

No, they did not. Read this thread. The bombs did not end the war. The Big Six would not even meet in response to Hiroshima, but they met almost as soon as they heard about the Russian invasion.

Now move along, Paid Russian Troll. You’re not dividing Americans here because nobody believes you are actually an American.

LOL! Huh?! You must be joking. In case you somehow missed this fact, some of my main points are that the Soviet version of WW II is a lie, that we should have let the Soviet Union get wiped out when we had the chance, that Soviet domination of Eastern Europe after the war was a crime and a tragedy, and that allowing the Soviets to enter the Pacific War was a huge mistake.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Another myth that Hasegawa debunks is that Truman decided to nuke Japan because Japan rejected the Potsdam Declaration. Hasegawa points out that General Handy’s order to General Spaatz authorizing the use of nukes was given on July 25, the day before the Potsdam Declaration was released:

It is important to note that Handy’s order to Spaatz, the only existing direct order to deploy atomic bombs against Japan, was given on July 25, the day before the Potsdam Proclamation was issued. The popular myth, artificially concocted by Truman and Stimson themselves and widely believed in the United States, that Japan’s rejection of the Potsdam Proclamation led to the U.S. decision to drop the bomb, cannot be supported by the facts. Truman wrote that he issued the order to drop the bomb after Japan rejected the Potsdam Proclamation. The truth is quite the opposite. (Racing the Enemy, p. 152)​

This explains why Truman and Byrnes refused to clarify the emperor's status in the Potsdam Declaration. They did not want Japan to surrender until they had a chance to drop at least one or two nukes on Japan.

By the way, we knew that American POWs were being held in Hiroshima, but we nuked the city anyway.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Now move along, Paid Russian Troll. You’re not dividing Americans here because nobody believes you are actually an American. I don’t blame the left for your ignorant troll posts. I blame Putin.

This comical polemic deserves further comment. I guess you don't realize that you are the one parroting Russian propaganda, not I.

The Soviets were thrilled when FDR began imposing increasingly harsh sanctions on Japan for doing the same thing that we, the French, the British, not to mention the Soviets, had been doing for decades. The Soviets were deathly afraid that Japan would attack their eastern flank; therefore, their agents in the U.S. government and in the media launched a propaganda campaign to smear Japan and to persuade the American government not to make peace with Japan but to provoke Japan to war. FDR did everything the Soviets wanted him to do regarding Japan, and then some.

Ditto for China. The Soviets did not want the Nationalists to make peace with Japan. The Soviets provided huge amounts of military aid to the Nationalists, including the sending of advisers and even pilots. Here, too, FDR followed Soviet policy and joined the Soviets in urging/pressuring the Nationalists not to make peace with Japan.

So if anyone is talking like a Russian troll, it is you, not I.

And, "P@triot," I don't know about your version of American patriotism, but my version does not include betraying a long-time anti-Communist ally, provoking that ally to war, siding with one of the most brutal tyrannies in world history, and then handing over China to the Chinese Communists, who proceeded to kill over 30 million Chinese.

 

[P@triot]

And, "P@triot," I don't know about your version of American patriotism, but my version does not include betraying a long-time anti-Communist ally, provoking that ally to war, siding with one of the most brutal tyrannies in world history, and then handing over China to the Chinese Communists, who proceeded to kill over 30 million Chinese.

No, instead your version deems America as the “great imperialist evil empire” who attacked innocent little Japan and deserved to be bombed at Pearl Harbor.

Move along, Putin boy.

 

[luchitociencia]

No, instead your version deems America as the “great imperialist evil empire” who attacked innocent little Japan and deserved to be bombed at Pearl Harbor.

Move along, Putin boy.

I'm not American born. And until right over my teens, I remember to heard in my country that the attack to Pearl Harbor was the culmination of several petitions of Japan for the US to stop the oil embargo.

What I heard was that while the war was in progress, the US and England decided to provoke Japan to get into the war. Doing so, Japan, which in those years was a great nation, the leader of the fish industry in the world, and the envy of the rest of nations because of it, could be included to be destroyed and "kill two birds (Germany and Japan) with the same shot".

Japan was in need of oil to keep their fish industry in business but the oil was controlled by the allies before the end of the war and they denied their petitions.

This version I heard in my teens "justifies" the desperate resolution of Japan to attack the US base near their island.

By the way, do you know why the US government decided to put in concentration camps to Japanese people regardless of age and sex?

 

[gipper]

No, instead your version deems America as the “great imperialist evil empire” who attacked innocent little Japan and deserved to be bombed at Pearl Harbor.

Move along, Putin boy.

I'm not American born. And until right over my teens, I remember to heard in my country that the attack to Pearl Harbor was the culmination of several petitions of Japan for the US to stop the oil embargo.

What I heard was that while the war was in progress, the US and England decided to provoke Japan to get into the war. Doing so, Japan, which in those years was a great nation, the leader of the fish industry in the world, and the envy of the rest of nations because of it, could be included to be destroyed and "kill two birds (Germany and Japan) with the same shot".

Japan was in need of oil to keep their fish industry in business but the oil was controlled by the allies before the end of the war and they denied their petitions.

This version I heard in my teens "justifies" the desperate resolution of Japan to attack the US base near their island.

By the way, do you know why the US government decided to put in concentration camps to Japanese people regardless of age and sex?

Yes, FDR did all he could to incite Japan to attack. He imposed draconian sanctions and absurd demands on Japan, like demanding their leave China before oil would be released. He knew Japan couldn’t meet his demands. He then refused to even meet with Japan’s envoys in Washington, who tried on multiple occasions to appease FDR.

He also knew the Japanese fleet was steaming to Pearl Harbor, since their naval communications code was broken by the US. He refused to warn commanders and then scapegoated them after the attack. He did get the carriers out, but sacrificed the sailors left in the harbor. (Clearly FDR was a psychopath).

The forced imprisonment of Japanese Americans was another sick thing FDR did. It was racist and unconstitutional, but many Americans feared these people might be traitors.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Hasegawa hits the nail on the head when he makes the case that Truman and Byrnes used the Potsdam Declaration as their excuse for nuking Japan, that they refused to include an assurance about the emperor’s status in the declaration precisely because they feared that such an assurance would induce the Japanese to surrender before the nukes could be dropped:

In order to drop the bomb, the United States had to issue the ultimatum to Japan. . . . And this ultimatum had to be rejected by the Japanese in order to justify the use of the atomic bomb. The best way to accomplish all this was to insist upon unconditional surrender. . . .​

In the July 25 entry for his Potsdam diary, Truman . . . stated, “This weapon is to be used between now and August 10th. I have told the Secretary of War. Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. . . . The target will be a purely military target.” Thus even before the atomic bomb was deployed, the president was deceiving himself into believing that a bomb with the ability to cause “the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high” could be used solely against military targets without killing women and children. . . .​

He did not say that he hoped Japan would accept it [the Potsdam Declaration] so that he would not have to use the bomb. Rather, his diary implies that he would issue the ultimatum only as an excuse to justify the dropping of the bomb. . . . (Racing the Enemy, pp. 158-160)​

Hasegawa also points out that Truman and Byrnes’ decision not to ask the Soviets to sign the Potsdam Declaration, even though they knew the Soviets wanted and expected to be included in any such proclamation, was a further guarantee that Japan would not accept it:

The omission of Stalin’s signature from the Potsdam Proclamation had a profound effect on Japanese policy. The Japanese immediately noticed that Stalin did not sign the proclamation. This prompted them to continue their efforts to terminate the war through Soviet mediation rather than immediately accepting the conditions stipulated by the Potsdam Proclamation. (p. 162)​

As Truman and Byrnes knew, Stalin’s signature on the Potsdam Declaration might have caused the Japanese to either accept the Potsdam terms or to open direct negotiations with America. The first possibility would have made it impossible to test the nukes on Japan. The second possibility would have made it difficult to justify using nukes.

These facts belie the story that Truman and Byrnes wanted to avoid Soviet entry into the war at all costs. They were more determined to avoid an early Japanese surrender so they could nuke Japan than they were to keep the Soviets from entering the war. As Hasegawa notes,

But the question remains: If Byrnes’ overriding concern was Soviet expansion in China, why did he not accept Stimson’s recommendation to forestall Soviet entry into the war? From the Magic intercepts, he was well aware that dropping the demand for unconditional surrender and ensuring the continuation of a constitutional monarchy under the current dynasty [i.e., promising not to depose the emperor] might quicken Japanese surrender. More important, he also knew that any ultimatum that insisted upon unconditional surrender would be rejected by Japan. (p. 158)​

 

[whitehall]

I changed my mind after reading James Bradley's remarkable book, "Flyboys". I always felt that it was immoral for the U.S. to be the first to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese but it may have saved Japanese (and American) lives. Saipan was the first piece of the Japanese homeland that the U.S. invaded and scores of civilians committed suicide rather than surrender to U.S. forces. Old grandfathers slit the throats of their grandkids and threw them in the ocean before jumping to their deaths. Young girls fixed their hair and their clothes and jumped to their deaths. Even after loudspeakers in Japanese explained that U.S. Troops meant them no harm they continued to kill themselves. The country was collectively insane. Bushido holdouts had a grand plan that 3 million Japanese civilians (mostly women and children and old men) would mobilize with sharpened bamboo spears and confront the invading army. Even after General LeMay ordered Tokyo to be firebombed with cylinders of napalm and an estimated 200,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated in a single B-29 firestorm raid the Bushido crazies and the maniac emperor thought they could still win the final battle. It wasn't until the super weapon was unleashed that the crazies decided to surrender.

 

[Unkotare]

....Saipan was the first piece of the Japanese homeland that the U.S. invaded and scores of civilians committed suicide rather than surrender to U.S. forces. .....

Cultural ignorance leads to misinterpretation.

 

[Unkotare]

.... would mobilize with sharpened bamboo spears and confront the invading army. ......

Propaganda meant for the domestic population, not you 75 years later.

 

[Flash]

I worked at Hanford a couple of decades ago.

Hanford is where they made the plutonium core for the nuclear weapon used at Nagasaki.

They were retired but there were still some of the old timers around that had worked on the project.

They were damn proud of the work they did and the results that it achieved. A quick end to the war saving hundreds of thousands if not over a million American and Japanese lives.

Self loathing American hating Liberals can do all the pathetic mindless idiotic revisionism they want and then go fuck themselves. They don't know any more about History as they know about Economics, Climate Science, Ethics, the Constitution or Biology.

.

 

[Unkotare]

... A quick end to the war saving hundreds of thousands if not over a million American and Japanese lives....

.

Read the whole thread. That speculation has been dealt with already.

 

[Flash]

... A quick end to the war saving hundreds of thousands if not over a million American and Japanese lives....

.

Read the whole thread. That speculation has been dealt with already.

I read the whole thread. I saw a lot of revisionist stupidity.

Nobody knows jackshit about what could have happen. What we do know is what did happen.

The war was quickly over with the course the war took. The uranium bomb built at Oak Ridge and the plutonium bomb built at Hanford. My uncle was damn glad the bombs were dropped. He was scheduled for the invasion.

Anything else is nothing more than speculation.

 

[Unkotare]

... A quick end to the war saving hundreds of thousands if not over a million American and Japanese lives....

.

Read the whole thread. That speculation has been dealt with already.

I read the whole thread. I saw a lot of revisionist stupidity.

Nobody knows jackshit about what could have happen. What we do know is what did happen.

The war was quickly over with the course the war took. The uranium bomb built at Oak Ridge and the plutonium bomb built at Hanford. My uncle was damn glad the bombs were dropped. He was scheduled for the invasion.

Anything else is nothing more than speculation.

YOU are speculating. Read your own post.

 

[mikegriffith1]

... A quick end to the war saving hundreds of thousands if not over a million American and Japanese lives.....

Read the whole thread. That speculation has been dealt with already.

I read the whole thread. I saw a lot of revisionist stupidity.

No, you read facts that you could not bring yourself to process. If any version is "revisionist," it is the Stimson version, which every nuke defense since then has used as its starting point. Stimson didn't even write most of it.

Why do you suppose that the vast majority of scholars who specialize in Japan's surrender disagree with you?

Nobody knows jack about what could have happen. What we do know is what did happen.

Actually, that's just not true, and it hasn't been true for a long, long time. You might read Emperor Hirohito and the Pacific War (University of Washington Press, 2015) by Dr. Noriko Kawamura, a professor of history at Washington State University, who was able to access previously unavailable Japanese documents.

The war was quickly over with the course the war took. The uranium bomb built at Oak Ridge and the plutonium bomb built at Hanford. My uncle was damn glad the bombs were dropped. He was scheduled for the invasion.

Your uncle did not know that the Japanese had been ready to surrender weeks earlier, that Truman and his cronies knew this, and that Japan would have surrendered in a matter of days after the Soviets entered the Pacific War, without our dropping any nukes or any other kind of bomb. I bet if your uncle had known these things, he would have had a very different view of Truman's decision to nuke Japan twice in four-day period. I am willing to bet that your uncle would have been downright disgusted and ashamed of the nuking of Nagasaki if he had known the above-mentioned information.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Interestingly, even historian George Feifer, who wrote a labored, lengthy defense of the nuking of Hiroshima, conceded that a strong case can be made against the nuking of Nagasaki:

A stronger case can be made against the second bomb [Nagasaki], especially its dropping so cruelly soon after the first. The Supreme War Council’s minutes reveal that Hiroshima’s destruction made no real dent in its thinking. After acknowledging that an awesome new weapon had caused it, the members essentially proceeded directly to their outstanding military concerns. Nevertheless, three days gave them too little time to assess the damage and the nature of the weapon that produced it, let alone to reflect on the larger consequences. (The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb, 2001, Kindle Edition, loc. 8979)​

Feifer also conceded that Japan was practically prostrate before Truman nuked her:

The country’s woeful condition before the bombs were dropped was hardly secret either. Virtually her entire merchant marine and Navy lay at the bottom of the Pacific, while America alone, without the Royal Navy, had 23 battleships, 99 carriers, and 72 cruisers on hand in August. The Imperial Navy’s corresponding numbers were one, six, and four—and it had fuel only enough to sustain a force of 20 operational destroyers and perhaps 40 submarines for a few days at sea. Nor was sufficient food available for civilians who showed their ration cards in the shops that stood still. Relentless saturation bombing, easier than ever with the new bases on Okinawa and the feeble opposition from Japanese interceptors, was leveling Japan’s cities.​

The average adult existed on under 1,300 calories a day. As many as 13 million were homeless. Malaria and tuberculosis were rampant, especially in shantytowns rising in the urban ashes. Schoolchildren, barefoot in winter as well as summer, rooted out forest pine stumps for the war effort. The trees themselves were long gone. In Tokushima, home of many of the 6,000 troops lost on the Toyoma Maru, metal was so scarce that the bells of shrines were melted down, together with charcoal braziers, the sole source of heat for the remaining wood-and-paper homes. While huge numbers of Red Army troops mobilized to attack Manchuria—just as Tadashi Kojo had feared a year earlier, when his regiment was shipped from there to Okinawa—there was no hope of supplying the defenders even if the merchant fleet hadn’t been destroyed and the country’s industry wasn’t in shambles. Exhausted, slowly starving Japan was in no shape for further fighting. (Ibid., loc. 8862-8878)​

 

[Doc7505]

Interestingly, even historian George Feifer, who wrote a labored, lengthy defense of the nuking of Hiroshima, conceded that a strong case can be made against the nuking of Nagasaki:

A stronger case can be made against the second bomb [Nagasaki], especially its dropping so cruelly soon after the first. The Supreme War Council’s minutes reveal that Hiroshima’s destruction made no real dent in its thinking. After acknowledging that an awesome new weapon had caused it, the members essentially proceeded directly to their outstanding military concerns. Nevertheless, three days gave them too little time to assess the damage and the nature of the weapon that produced it, let alone to reflect on the larger consequences. (The Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb, 2001, Kindle Edition, loc. 8979)​

Feifer also conceded that Japan was practically prostrate before Truman nuked her:

The country’s woeful condition before the bombs were dropped was hardly secret either. Virtually her entire merchant marine and Navy lay at the bottom of the Pacific, while America alone, without the Royal Navy, had 23 battleships, 99 carriers, and 72 cruisers on hand in August. The Imperial Navy’s corresponding numbers were one, six, and four—and it had fuel only enough to sustain a force of 20 operational destroyers and perhaps 40 submarines for a few days at sea. Nor was sufficient food available for civilians who showed their ration cards in the shops that stood still. Relentless saturation bombing, easier than ever with the new bases on Okinawa and the feeble opposition from Japanese interceptors, was leveling Japan’s cities.​

The average adult existed on under 1,300 calories a day. As many as 13 million were homeless. Malaria and tuberculosis were rampant, especially in shantytowns rising in the urban ashes. Schoolchildren, barefoot in winter as well as summer, rooted out forest pine stumps for the war effort. The trees themselves were long gone. In Tokushima, home of many of the 6,000 troops lost on the Toyoma Maru, metal was so scarce that the bells of shrines were melted down, together with charcoal braziers, the sole source of heat for the remaining wood-and-paper homes. While huge numbers of Red Army troops mobilized to attack Manchuria—just as Tadashi Kojo had feared a year earlier, when his regiment was shipped from there to Okinawa—there was no hope of supplying the defenders even if the merchant fleet hadn’t been destroyed and the country’s industry wasn’t in shambles. Exhausted, slowly starving Japan was in no shape for further fighting. (Ibid., loc. 8862-8878)​

~~~~~~
Just love it. Wednesday not Monday but Wednesday morning quarterbacks pontificating on decisions made 75 years ago.

 

[fncceo]

Your uncle did not know that the Japanese had been ready to surrender weeks earlier, that Truman and his cronies knew this, and that Japan would have surrendered in a matter of days after the Soviets entered the Pacific War,

It's amazing how many people can tell the future ... in the future.

Knowing the future from the past, that's the trick.

In fact, in the final days of the war, the Japanese cabinet was torn between those who wanted to surrender with honorable terms and those who wanted to go down fighting and take as many yabanjin down with them as possible. I've listened to my friend's grandmother tell us stories about how they were being trained with spears as young girls in school to rush the invaders and go down fighting (she even showed us the spear). It is unknown how many school children would have done this in reality, but she was convinced, at the time, that she would follow her school friends into the fight if it happened.

It's impossible to know what was the final straw that broke the back of the Japanese hard-liners in the cabinet. Surely, the Russians entering the war was a factor, but the Japanese had a lot of contempt for the Russians, having decidedly defeated them previously, in 1905. I'm not convinced they saw it as a significant threat compared to the Allied invasion. I support that belief with the fact that even after the declaration of war by the Russians, the Japanese continued to mass their forces on Kyushu island to face a potential Allied invasion from Okinawa, they did not move any forces to the north to counter a potential threat from Russia.

But, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the new weapon could not have been an insignificant factor in the decision to surrender unconditionally. I still believe that, at the time, the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a strategically defensible position.

 

[gipper]

Your uncle did not know that the Japanese had been ready to surrender weeks earlier, that Truman and his cronies knew this, and that Japan would have surrendered in a matter of days after the Soviets entered the Pacific War,

It's amazing how many people can tell the future ... in the future.

Knowing the future from the past, that's the trick.

In fact, in the final days of the war, the Japanese cabinet was torn between those who wanted to surrender with honorable terms and those who wanted to go down fighting and take as many yabanjin down with them as possible. I've listened to my friend's grandmother tell us stories about how they were being trained with spears as young girls in school to rush the invaders and go down fighting (she even showed us the spear). It is unknown how many school children would have done this in reality, but she was convinced, at the time, that she would follow her school friends into the fight if it happened.

It's impossible to know what was the final straw that broke the back of the Japanese hard-liners in the cabinet. Surely, the Russians entering the war was a factor, but the Japanese had a lot of contempt for the Russians, having decidedly defeated them previously, in 1905. I'm not convinced they saw it as a significant threat compared to the Allied invasion. I support that belief with the fact that even after the declaration of war by the Russians, the Japanese continued to mass their forces on Kyushu island to face a potential Allied invasion from Okinawa, they did not move any forces to the north to counter a potential threat from Russia.

But, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the new weapon could not have been an insignificant factor in the decision to surrender unconditionally. I still believe that, at the time, the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a strategically defensible position.

Mass murdering defenseless civilians can’t ever be considered defensible. It was a war crime for which no one paid a price.