Imi, I’ve taken the time to send you a long winded PM. I suggest you read it and consider what I’ve said carefully…
No, the replies you provoked with your ill-considered comments about the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945 reflect informed opinions about the actual circumstances, something that is sadly lacking in your case.
There are many Americans who express the same opinion as you, but it is a reflection of either very poor judgment, a deficient education, or both. Intelligent people who take the time to study the matter usually realize that, given the circumstances, the atomic bombs were the best possible alternative and actually saved the lives of millions of Japanese, Americans, and others in Japanese-occupied territories.
I suggest you do more research into the Pacific war; a good place to start would be Richard Frank’s book "Downfall; the End of The Imperial Japanese Empire".
What if Japan didn’t surrender and the Soviets invaded more Japanese territory than they did? The Soviet sphere of influence would have expanded more than it did.
Which is precisely why the rapid Soviet advance was a major factor in Japan deciding to surrender.
Any Axis power in WWII, or since, with half a brain would prefer to surrender to a Western power than the Soviets.
Compare the post-war experiences of East and West Germany.
Japan’s surrender was not the limiting factor in the Soviet’s advance in the Far East. Even after Japan announced it’s willingness to accept the Potsdam Declaration, the Soviets continued to advance along several fronts, and occupy territory formerly held by the Japanese. The limiting factor in the Soviet advance was logistical and, in the case of islands, was assault sealift capacity, which for the Soviets, was limited to about a regiment.
Stalin wanted to occupy a portion of the Japanese Home Islands, but when this idea was broached by the Soviets, MacArthur and Truman quickly told Stalin the United States would be the sole occupier of the Home Islands. Since Stalin realized that Soviet military, and especially naval, power in the region was extremely limited compared to the US, he did not push the issue. It could also be argued that the recent use of the atomic bomb played a role in Stalin’s acquiescence, but if so, it was certainly not Stalin’s major consideration.
In any case, shortly after the war, the Soviets having occupied most of Manchuria, voluntarily returned the area to Chiang’s Nationalist Chinese Army. The only former Japanese territory which the Soviets occupied and which was turned over to a Soviet proxy government was North Korea.
Geez. You know, egorka and Chevan, my sister in law is Russian and she too sees literally EVERYTHING in a political light, as if no other considerations have much or any importance. In your cases, you aver that the bomb was dropped “mainly to impress the Russians”. LOL! How very Russian of you. Don’t confuse a secondary benefit with the main one. It is also not true, simply put, that the Japanese were ready to capitulate. Again, one is confusing the stark reality that Japan could not win the war with the much more powerful sentiment that it could also not surrender because the Japanese just don’t do that sort of thing, at least not while the Emperor is watching.
There seems to be a tendency to see something sinister in the quite legitimate US objective of keeping Stalin in check with the prospect of overwhelming US military superiority. I agree, however, that impressing the Soviets was not the main reason for using the atomic bombs on Japan; it was simply a very desirable by-product.
As for the Japanese being ready to capitulate prior to the use of the atomic bombs, no one who has studied the Japanese primary documentation of the period can seriously sustain such an argument.
If the Japanese were so ready to capitulate, why didn’t the Soviets encourage them to do so in July, 1945, when Japan approached the Soviet government with the object of asking the Soviets to be a mediator between Japan and the US? The answer is, of course, that Japan was NOT ready to accept any terms remotely acceptable to the US at any time prior to August 6th. 1945. Moreover, the last thing Stalin wanted was for the Pacific war to end before the Soviets had a chance to loot Manchuria and Korea.
I do not think that anyone was fully aware of the full impact of atomic bombing. US also wanted surender at all costs, the policy that is still enforced today. They could of kicked Japanese out od China, and let them simmer on their own island as long as they like. But they wanted ravenge and occupation in east like was made in west. Allied forces have finished the war in the same style Axis forces have started it proving that we are all animals if given proper chance.
Arguably true before the initial (but not final) decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan, but then this was before an atomic bomb had ever been detonated, so the uncertainty was unavoidable.
Not true.
The US would have been satisfied only with an unconditional surrender by the Japanese. Nor, unfortunately, is any such policy in effect among the US leadership today. Such a goal has not been pursued in any war since WW II.
Not without committing massive resources and incurring unacceptable casualties, not to mention intolerable delay, and the question of whether either of the major Chinese factions would have accepted what would have amounted to an army of occupation on Chinese soil.
Occupation of Japan was seen as necessary to avoid the development of a situation similar to that of Germany after WW I. This was probably the wisest decision made by the American government in the Pacific war.
Considering the type of war Japan had prosecuted in China and other occupied territories, and the treatment of captured Allied military and civilian personnel, the Allies were quite magnanimous and humane toward the Japanese. The Japanese were extremely fortunate to avoid occupation by the Soviets who certainly would not have, as the US did immediately after the war, made shipments of 800,000 tons of emergency food to stave off a threatened famine among Japanese civilians.
Nor, unfortunately, is any such policy in effect among the US leadership today. Such a goal has not been pursued in any war since WW II.
Iraq?
Not without committing massive resources and incurring unacceptable casualties, not to mention intolerable delay
Delaying what?
avoid the development of a situation similar to that of Germany after WW I
Situation in germany was developed because of occupation of parts of german soil and harsh terms of Peace Treaty.
The Japanese were extremely fortunate to avoid occupation by the Soviets
… who as a country did more crimes than Third Reich and Imperial Japan combined together, and occupied as many countries as these two.
But this is not a discussion for this thread. Nukes were used, same like incendiary bombs in europe, because they were available and nobody cared how many human beings will die, as long as war is won. Allied govenments just did what thay had to do, same like axis guvernments earlier. If one government would do this today this would for sure be labeled as crime and it was also a crime in 1945… maybe a justified one but still a crime.
Unfortunately, no. The US would be all too willing to negotiate with any faction if such negotiation offered the prospect of achieving at least some of the goals the US entertains in Iraq.
Sorry, but I thought that should be obvious. Trying to clear the Japanese troops from China would have delayed the end of the war and the end of the dying of hundreds of thousands of people living in Japanese occupied territories.
Well, it’s not quite that simple. The situation I refer to was the “stab in the back” theory that was current in the 1920’s and 1930’s, and the conviction that Germany had not really lost the war. This was one of the fundamental beliefs that Hitler exploited in convincing the Germans that it was really the Jews who were to blame for Germany’s problems.
Had Germany been completely occupied by the victorious powers it would have been possible to purge the country of the reactionary and extreme radical elements giving democracy a better chance to survive.
A premise I would dispute, but only because generally, the extent of Japanese war crimes in Asia during WW II has never been fully understood in the West.
The use of the atomic bombs on Japan was NOT a crime, either from a technical, juris prudence standpoint, nor from a practical standpoint of avoiding unnecessary loss of life. Claiming it was is irresponsible and incorrect. The arguments in support of this contention have been offered far too often in great detail on this forum for me to profitably recount them here. Suffice it to say, the atomic bombs saved lives, shortened the war, and was, under the prevailing conventions and customs of war, completely legal.
“We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo … than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.”
–Gen. Curtis LeMay, then commander of the air assault on Japan
And that is WAR. Attacking cities by air started even before WW2. And the Japanese did it to the Chinese and the Germans did it to the British (and both well before we even entered the war.)
Crimes can only be crimes if the countries involved decided first if they were to be crimes. And air attacks on cities were not, especially if there were military targets in the cities. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki had military targets in them (as most major cities would have.)
If there is any crime, it was the bayoneting of thousands of Chinese by the Japanese. It was the biological experiments on the Chinese by the Japanese. It was the enslavement of the Korean and Chinese people by the Japanese. But it was not the bombing, nuclear or conventional. That was war.
You will note even TODAY Russia, China, Britain, France, and the U.S. still do target cities.
Deaf
This is kind of off topic but I wanted to respond to this - the difference between the US in Iraq (and Afghanistan, too for that matter) and pretty much every war since WWII (other than possibly the Korean War) is that the US was/is fighting an insurgency as opposed to an established government. Looking at these wars through the WWII “style of fighting”, the US won every single battle in each war. While it took the US nearly 7 months to only get through roughly 3/4 of Germany in late 1944-mid 1945, the US got through all of Iraq in 3 weeks. The post-war insurgency in Iraq is more appropriate to be compared to the partisans in occupied Europe…there is no country or city or physical place to invade or take over.
Even in the Vietnam War, which the US obviously never met its long term objectives in, the US won every single major battle and VC/NVA always took massive casualities, which was still following the WWII thinking and planning of meeting the enemy on a battlefield, being bigger and stronger than they are and killing as many of them as possible (which I guess you can’t blame the US for, since they were planning on fighting against the USSR, which would have needed to use the massive WWII type of battles).
Basically, the reason for this change after WWII is because the US became so powerful that only a very small number of countries (USSR, possibly China) could actually go “toe-to-toe” with the US and fight against the US directly. The US/UN would have easily won the Korean War (controlling all of the Korean peninsula) if the Chinese didn’t get involved.
Your point is not entirely clear to me, but it seems to be that the “proxy wars” that occurred after WW II are different in that there was/is no centralized government entity which was/is susceptible to the WW II definition of total defeat. If that is your contention, I do not dispute it.
However, my point is that the US, after WW II never again committed to a war all of the material and psychological resources necessary to win a complete victory. In every war since WW II, the US has been willing to accept “half a loaf”, obtained through negotiation with the enemy if necessary, rather than pursue the actions required to win all of it’s goals. Starting with the Korean war (which, BTW, is not over yet), the US attempted to fight each war without putting the entire country on a war-like footing.
This has resulted in a mixed bag of outcomes; in the Korean war the US achieved the stabilization of South Korea and preserved it’s independence, albeit with a persistently hostile neighbor to it’s north. In the Viet Namese war, the US did not achieve any of it’s major goals despite heavy costs in blood and treasure.
I think the major reason for this is that none of the proxy wars presented potential threats to any crucially vital national interests. It was/is therefore difficult to justify putting the country and it’s population on a total war footing. In a sense that is why proxy wars are so insidious; they do not create threats that warrant mobilizing the full might of the country, yet they are designed to continually chip away at important national interests.
I think that the main issue is the lasting harm done by the radiation beyond the end of the war. If there had been a regular bombing raid many people would still have died, but the physical effects would then be over.
I don’t think it was a war crime, but it is a little disingenuous to say that the saving of Japanese lives was a consideration, because I doubt it really was. It was done to save Allied lives, which I guess is the job of the Allied commanders.
I think we are shocked by the sheer power of the weapons. However, perhaps it helped to prevent an open war between the USA and the USSR.
Can you quantify the “lasting harm” done by the radiation from the atomic bombs?
I’m specifically seeking the numbers of people who died prematurely from the effects of radiation. The numbers that I have studied for mortality rates indicate that there was no statistical difference in mortality rates for people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and those resident in Tokyo and other cities.
Everyone talks about the “lasting effects of radiation poisoning” but nobody can cite the actual numbers other than obviously inflated guesses with no real basis in actual deaths.
I agree with you , Smoking Frog. I think that the devastating power of the atomic bomb and expecially the later effects on the people, had played a leading role in the Cold War, between the Atlantic Pact and the Soviet block, as well to prevent the death of a high number of Allied soldiers, in case of a landing on Japan shores.
Hi Wizard,
I’m sorry, I don’t have any figures like that. I understood that the radiation had lead to birth defects and increased cases of cancer.
I won’t attempt to guess at any figures, I was just repeating what I had heard and accepted. I doubt that the deaths would be listed as radiation poisoning at the time, as it was so little understood. I think that later medical researchers would have noted peaks in the rates of conditions like those listed above and made the link with the radiation that way.
But what WERE the “later devastating effects on the people”?
The only numbers I can find that have any realistic basis indicate the “lasting” effects of radiation on the general population were minimal.
That’s my point; I think we are assuming way too much just because it sounds logical and seems intuitive. In fact, studies of Japanese mortality rates do not support the presumption of large numbers of deaths among the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Ngasaki due to the lingering effects of radiation. Almost all of the documented deaths from radiation poisoning occurred within the first year or so of the bombing.
Richard Frank, in His book "[I}Downfall; The End of The Imperial Japanese Empire[/i] mentions the Hibakuska; the survivors of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After the war, the Japanese government began a registry of people who were within a certain radius of the the atomic explosions within a certain time period. At first people were reluctant to be identified in this group, but when it became known that the Japanese government was providing free health care to these people, the numbers ballooned. Frank states that, as of the writing of his book in 2000, there were more registered Hibakuska than people remaining in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in mid-August, 1945. Moreover, when a Hibakuska dies, no matter what the reason, even if run down by a bus, another person is added to the toll of atomic bomb victims.