Tableland

First, why would the US get involved in a war until its vital national interests were at stake? I get quite bored of the "they didn't enter the war till...." There is no reason why they, or any othe state, would. Second, the US was as involved as it could be before the December 7 attacks, but FDR could not get a war declaration out of Congress until a physical attack on US territory. Third, do you expect the UK not to pay back its debts? The essence of debts is they get paid back, no? Maybe if the UK hadn't blown all its reconstruction money on the NHS before investing in the wider infrastructure, it would have been able to pay the money back sooner. Finally, Truman had no choice but to drop the bombs. Firstly, it avoided an invasion of the Japanese homeland, saving at least 500,000 lives*, secondly, it showed the Soviets the US had the bomb and were prepared to use it, thirdly, it expedited the US invasion of Japan before the Soviets could get there in the north, thereby stopping Japan from enjoying the same fate of the North Koreans for the last 60 years.

*it might be of note that the US govt. had 500,000 purple hearts made prior to the invasion - such were the anticipated losses. This rather puts the 4000 odd casualties in Iraq into context.

Rich_007

That was a war ? I thought it was a massacre of remote incendiary devices and foolish friendly fire ?

Silly me. What a glorious 'war" to win. What side were we on ?

R.

nooka

I think you will find that there are alternative views on whether or not dropping the bombs was justified. Certainly there is a lot of debate amongst historians and strategists as to whether the second bomb was justified, even from a purely military or political standpoint.

jimf

Various military successes. Early ones to establish the American "Empire".

I suppose the USA beat us - War of Indepence/American Revolution depending what you prefer to call it. Something of a half hearted and incompetent effort on our part and, at the time, generally regarded as a military defeat to the French (them again) who intervened decisively in favour of the rebels/patriots. (The French gentry who supported this freedom from the British aristocracy were themselves on the receiving end 5 or 6 years later.)

USA then went on to try to purchase land from Mexico. When Mexico wouldn't sell USA invaded, won a military victory and then completed the purchase for a lot less money than originally offered.

USA then achieved a military victory over the Confederate States of America.

Hoovering up various pacific islands. Probably the ones that GB/France hadn't got to yet.

Gulf War 2 - won years ago - according to George W anyway.

Tableland

Who on earth said opposing armies had to be of equal size and power for a conflict to constitute a war?

Tableland

Putting the cultural norms of our own time on to Truman et al is a mistake, and we can only judge his decision by looking at this through the values of his own time. Hiroshima was supposed to induce a surrender, and thereby avoid the 500,000 casualties I mention. The fact that the Japanese still did not surrender after Hiroshima not only demonstrates how right the US was when it assessed the Japanese fighting spirit, but also how necessary the second bomb was to force the surrender.

JonboyE

Like all history, it depends on your viewpoint. Although I agree that context is important, you can't dismiss any attempt at an objective view of the American's actions.

If we accept that one of the reasons for dropping the bomb was to shorten the war with Japan, demonstrating to the world that the US had the bomb and was willing to use it was equally, if not more, important.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki (along with the alternate test sites of Kyoto and Kokura) were selected long before the Potsdam Declaration. Ample evidence of this is the fact that despite the blanket fire bombing of Japanese cities in 1945 these were left untouched so a proper assessment of the destructive power of the bombs could be made.

In early August 1945 Japan and the US were tentatively negotiating a surrender. The sticking point was that the Americans insisted that the surrender was unconditional. The Japaneses wanted a conditional surrender and a major obstacle was that the Japanese insisted on the continuation of the Imperial Throne. Ironically, the Americans realized shortly after the surrender how important this was to the reconstruction of the country.

If, and IMO it is a very big if, the Hiroshima bomb was justified, the Nagasaki bomb wasn't. Japan was about to surrender. The declaration of war by the Soviets made it inevitable. The High Command would have submitted to the Emperor's will. Surrender to the Americans was infinitely preferable to military defeat by the Soviets.

Trueman authorized the use of the bombs but he delegated the timing and targets to the military command. The two bombs were different and the military wanted to test them both. It was important to them to drop the second bomb BEFORE the Japanese surrendered. With, or without, imposing our cultural norms this was genocide, pure and simple.

The 500,000 potential American dead is a self-serving red herring. There was never a realistic prospect of the US having to invade the main islands of Japan. It was on the brink of surrendering. Even if it didn't, Japan could have been blockaded into defeat without the loss of any American lives.

nooka

That may well be your view, but there are plenty of academics with different opinions, and although some of them may be blinded by the prism of their own values the skill of a historian or strategist is to consider the original sources, and the consequences of actions and decisions when judging whether or not the bombing was justified. Indeed it is perfectly possible to consider that the bombs achieved some of their goals at the time, and still see other consequences, both intended and otherwise. There are similar debates about the bombing campaigns in Germany (in particular the carpet bombing of Dresden, which was the pre-runner to the approach taken in Japan). After all there has been very similar debate much more recently about whether the invasion of Iraq was justified on the basis of the intelligence received. It's pretty rare that any significant decision is considered as definitively the "right" one, either at the time or in retrospect.

Rich_007

God or Satan.

R.

JonboyE

I think it is hard to argue anything other than they achieved all their goals.

Agreed there is a debate to be had about this. The instigators of the Dresden bombings would claim that action designed to break the will of the civilian population to continue fighting is legitimate in a time of war. It is a military objective.

The same argument can be made for the Hiroshima bomb. It can't be made for the Nagasaki bomb because all the military objectives had been achieved by the former.

There may have been debate at the time. None, I think, in retrospect. Just truth and lies.

nooka

Well we won't really be able to tell for 50 years or so, when the Official Secrets Act lifts the veil in the UK at least. Generally at about that point a wider understanding of events becomes possible, as politics becomes history. I'd be surprised if there is only one interpretation possible, as this has very rarely happened in the past.

Tableland

Hi Jonboy - thanks very much for your reply. I have a few responses - see below.

My care not to impose today's post-modern values on to Truman's decision is an attempt to retain objectivity, not lose it.

This is an interesting point. On a side note, the firestorm bombings of Tokyo produced more casualties than the direct deaths incurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Certainly not overlooking the post-bombing radiation deaths which were horrific, the victims of the Tokyo firestorms had a much greater level of suffering than those of the two atomic bombs. The Trinity Test on July 16 was the catalyst for Truman to select the targets, and the decision to drop the bombs was made on July 25, not a great deal before the delivery of the weapons. If you have a source saying it was decided before the Trinity Test I would be grateful to see it.

I agree with you. The US demand for unconditional surrender was not unusual though.

Tsuyoshi Hasegawa would agree with you, however, we shouldn't overlook the fact that even after Hiroshima, the Chief of the Army General Staff Yoshijiro Umezu argued that Japan still was capable of defeating the US and therefore an unconditional surrender was inexcusable. The revisionist claim that the Soviet entry or a blocakde or both would be enough to force Japan to its knees is questionable in the light of the sentiments expressed by Japan's military ruling class at the time. I would suggest that Truman and his advisers had a better understanding of fascist Japanese mentality than we do after so many years of peace. Also, Hirohito's statement on August 14 made is clear that the atomic bombs were what forced the surrender, not the Soviet approach or anything else suggested by post-modern revisionists.

Even if we accept the testing hypothesis, we need to understand the decision in the light of the day and the values of the day, so I dispute your dismissal of the norms argument. For example, the Japanese committed acts of unspeakable barbarism across Asia, which we would consider genocidal or otherwise today, such as the Burma railroad and the rape of Nanking, or even the unprovoked attack and murder of the civilians of Pearl Harbor. The thirst for retribution was strong.

We will never know if there was a realistic prospect or not. The fighting talk expressed by the Japanese military class made it clear that the Japanese would never surrender. Examples of Japanese resistance to US occupation of non-mainland Japanese territory also made it clear. It might be the case that the rhetoric coming out of Japan was just that - empty rhetoric - but if so then the bluff backfired because the Americans were not kidding around. They were at the end of a long and unprovoked attack on their way of life, they had lost a lot of men, and they didn't want it to go on any longer, for the many reasons I mention in my earlier post.

Anyway, thanks for the debate, jonboy!

JonboyE

See here. This document is dated May 11, 1945 and you can see from it that Hiroshima, Kokura and Kyoto had already been selected as targets.


Agreed, and the thirst for retribution was understandably strong. Even so, it does not amount to a justification.

You are welcome. Hopefully i will have more time to be contrary later. Meanwhile, this is a brief read from the New Scientist.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

JonboyE

This comes to the crux of the matter. If Japan would never surrender, and fight tooth and nail for every inch of Japanese soil, then the first bomb could be considered the lesser of two evils.

However, the Allies knew that Japan was about to surrender. The Japanese government first proposed terms of surrender in January 1945. They were rejected out of hand by FDR on February 2nd. (I can understand why, but I do wonder, if the allies had taken the initiative to negotiate at that point how many lives could have been saved?) Although the surrender was proposed by the Japanese government, it wasn't supported by the military at that time. The High Command still believed they could win one big battle somewhere in the Pacific and, as a result, get much better surrender terms.

The point being, even the military knew they would have to surrender at some point. As the war went against them they conceed more and more of their demands. The only condition they would not conceed was the Imperial sucession. The notion of "no surrender" might have been bluff, or it might have been to encourage the ranks, but it was never part of military strategy.

Tableland

Thanks for the links - you might like Edward Linenthal (Ed) "History Wars - the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past". It's a steady revisionist text that supports much of what you have written.

Regards,
T