Should the atomic bombs have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

World War II General WWII Discussion
#361

Why did so many top American commanders appose dropping the A bombs on Japan, including, Fleet Admiral William Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), Major General Curtis LeMay and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, General Dwight Eisenhower and General MacArthur.

After all, the Japanese were already being bombed and burnt by the thousands day after day.

#362

It’s interesting to compare that with the debate among American commanders about whether to kill Admiral Yamamoto.

Why was it such a big deal whether Yamamoto got shot out of the sky when the Allies were killing just about every other Japanese they could find at the same time?

Why did it matter in 1945 whether Japanese were incinerated by ‘conventional’ bombs or nukes?

I’d say it always comes down to matter of personal opinion about what is right, or acceptable which is a different thing, and a lot of that comes from emotions which can’t be neatly articulated, on both sides.

As for Le May, in case it hasn’t already been menioned in this long thread, his firebombing and nuking of Japanese cities seems to have been appreciated in Japan. In 1964 Japan awarded him the medium-high level Order of the Rising Sun (not named after yours truly, nor vice versa :D).

The First Class of the Order of the Rising Sun (presented Dec. 7, 1964)
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1116

#363

That award to Le May is an odd one isn’t it. Even if the Japanese were looking at the wider picture, it still seems strange to award a man responsible for the deaths of so many Japanese.

Naturally any of the Axis leaders would have used the bomb, so would Stalin, as he gave it the green light at the Potsdam Conference. On July 24, 1945, President Truman told Stalin that the U.S. possessed "a new weapon of unusual destructive force.

However, Stalin did not betray his feelings and pretended that he saw nothing special in what Truman had imparted to him, saying ‘‘Good, I hope you use it to good effect’’

Both Churchill and many other Anglo-American authors subsequently assumed that Stalin had really failed to fathom the significance of what he had heard, but Stalin new about the Manhattan project through his spies and was working on his own bomb project under Kurchatov.

#364

There are various accounts and interpretations of that event, although the Soviet ones suggest that Stalin’s feigned lack of interest concealed a clear understanding of what he had been told. http://www.dannen.com/decision/potsdam.html

Howver, I have difficulty in reconciling such views with later Soviet claims that the US dropped the A bombs to intimidate the USSR.

Why would Stalin invite such a thing if he fully understood it and the supposed implications for US versus Soviet power?

Why would he need to invite it, or risk it, when he had crushing forces marshalling against the Japanese in Manchuria, which could achieve all the Soviet objectives in the dying days of a war which was planned on the basis of land advances by the Soviets from the West on the continent and the other Allies onto the Japanese home islands?

#365

…

#366

It was just one of many reasons. Though probably one of the main ones.

#367

Im for the Hiroshima but against the nagasaki. The Nagasaki dropping was a waste of rescorces and lives.

#368

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki they used explosive devices of two different phisical principals. Both had to be tested in the the battle circumstanses. Hense two targets were bombed.

#369

I wish they would have selected more military ones, such as the Tokyo Naval Yard…

#370

Think Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn’t been bombed like tokyo and they wanted pristine targets to show the effect of the bombs, plus the imperial palace was off limits to U.S.A.A.F. bombing.

To kill the person the Japanese revered as a living god might tend to harden their position to the point that even multiple atomic bombings might not get them to surrender.

By all accounts on August 1, 1945, five days before the bombing of Hiroshima, the U.S. Army Air Force dropped one million leaflets over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities warning that those cities were going to be destroyed within a few days and advising the residents to leave to save their lives.

One side of the leaflet had a photo of five U.S. bombers unloading bombs and a list of the targeted cities. The other side had the text. The English version of the leaflet is included in an article at the CIA website, “The Information War in the Pacific, 1945,” by Josette H. Williams. OWI stands for Office of War Information:

Front side of OWI notice #2106, dubbed the “LeMay bombing leaflet,” which was delivered to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on 1 August 1945. The Japanese text on the reverse side of the leaflet carried the following warning:
“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America’s humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now gives you warning to evacuate the cities named and save your lives. America is not fighting the Japanese people but is fighting the military clique which has enslaved the Japanese people. The peace which America will bring will free the people from the oppression of the military clique and mean the emergence of a new and better Japan. You can restore peace by demanding new and good leaders who will end the war. We cannot promise that only these cities will be among those attacked but some or all of them will be, so heed this warning and evacuate these cities immediately.”

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v46i3a07p.htm

#371

I’ve even heard that many in those cities suspected that they were being “saved” for some sort of terror weapon of mass destruction, long before the A-bombs were dropped…

#372

The converse is that the text in the last few lines of the leaflet is psywar stuff which could readily be interpreted as designed to create civilain panic to clog the roads etc to hamper the local war effort etc.

It’s a bit much to expect the Japanese to evacuate all those cities in case a couple got bombed, whether by conventional or nuclear weapons.

One interpretation could be that the Americans gave warnings which they and everyone else knew would be ignored because the scale of compliance was beyond Japan, in the same way that evacuating all of south eastern England was in 1940 if similar warnings had been delivered there, but it left them in the secure position of saying ‘We warned you.’ So we’re not responsible for whatever happend because you ignored our warnings, regardless of the strict controls on movement on civilians under Japanese law and practice at the time which stopped you moving anywhere.

#373

Oh of course. But I mean that it was rumored by the inhabitants of both cities that they were being saved by something from the scourge of US bombing. Some thought it divine intervention, others realized the what was actually happening as they were rarely attacked while almost all other Japanese cities burned…

#374

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki they used explosive devices of two different phisical principals. Both had to be tested in the the battle circumstanses. Hense two targets were bombed.

Actualy, the Nagasaki had been tested in Los Alamos… Also, supposedly the germans had tested a similar device to the little boy bomb but thats a load of $%&$!.

#375

I am maybe mistaken but the device in the Los Alamos test was not a bomb in the conventional sense, it was more like a charge, only the nuclear explosive core. Meaning that it was a device but not a bomb ment for the military application wheras the Hiroshima device did look like a bomb. Besides there is a differnece in the test circumstances and the reall war circumstances.

#376

I think perhaps the one good thing that came from the bombings (other than Japanese surrender) was a demonstration of the horrors of even a small (tactical) nuclear weapon used in an urban area. I’m not so sure they wouldn’t have been used during the Cold War without such a stigma…

I recall Chevan jumping me for saying something similar a while back, but I really think it’s true…

BTW, where is Chevan? Did he run afoul of the regime? :smiley:

#377

I think he’s still on a ?three week holiday.

When he gets back, you’re in the the shit. :wink:

As may some others of us who’ve been testing a few things in his absence.

Ashes, for a start. :smiley:

#378

Which raises the rarely considered issue, perhaps because it’s politically incorrect nowadays, of the level of Japanese belief in things like divine right from the Emperor who was descended from the one true god as lord of the chosen people (where have we heard things like that lately?) and so on which influenced the national atttitude.

#379

Yes, right. see what I mean and note the difference between “the gadget” and “Fat Man”.
The test the the Trinity site was not really the test of nuclear weapon. It was rather the test of nuclear fission. Which are two linked but yet different things.

The Trinity site “Gadget”:

The “Fat Man”:

#380

Im for the Hiroshima but against the nagasaki. The Nagasaki dropping was a waste of rescorces and lives.

One of the reasons that Nagasaki was also destroyed was that the Japanese were not prepared to surrender after Hiroshima. Until the second bomb fell, they still intended to fight on. In fact, my understanding is that it took direct intervention by the emperor for them to surrender–even after the second bomb.