nukchebi0 wrote:
CommieChipmunk wrote:
A flash so bright that it could be seen for miles around signaled the instantaneous demise for seventy thousand Japanese civilians on August 6th, 1945 (Kowinski). It was claimed to be the necessary end-all weapon in this long, drawn out war, but its true necessity comes into question when one observes the events and politics working behind the scenes in the days before the bomb was dropped. It is my belief that there was no need to rape our world of its atomic virginity and end the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as by the time the bomb was dropped, Japan posed no real threat.
Except that people were still dying in Asia.
Even after witnessing hoards of people boiled alive while trying to escape such a storm, the Japanese continued to fight. Stranded on an island, the Japanese could do little damage without transportation (
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tokyo.htm).
So they failed to surrender after seeing what kind of devastation the U.S. could provide conventionally. Does this provide any insight into the mentality of the leaders at the time?
The Japanese were a resilient people. Even after the mass destruction occurring on their own soil, they continued to fight. As part of “Operation Ten-Go” on April 6th, 1945, the Japanese launched an attack of 700 kamikaze planes against a US fleet and succeeded in destroying 13 ships. In April, the Japanese Air Force lost 2,280 training planes piloted by 16 year old boys due to kamikaze attacks;
effectively depleting their air force (
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWkamikaze.htm).
I wouldn't say that; the Japanese had planes and people being trained solely for this purpose leading up into the atomic bombings. They were preparing for the inevitable invasion, and were no hwere near incapacitated in regards to potential kamikaze attacks.
At one point the Japanese had the third largest navy in the world: 10 aircraft carriers, 100 destroyers, 18 heavy cruisers and 18 light cruisers (
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/pha), but after June 1942 and their loss at Midway, the Japanese navy was also destroyed. Without planes or ships, the Japanese posed little immediate threat and a significant amount of time would be needed to rebuild.
Offensive threat only. But if we left them alone they wouldn't have surrendered. Which means we would have had to starve them out, or invade them. Both would result in larger numbers of casualties than the combined atomic bombings.
The only Japanese military forces that remained strong and actually grew in size were the armed forces. In 1945, there were five and a half million soldiers in the army deployed throughout Asia, but the army, like the navy and air force, lacked supplies and due to lack of transportation, they couldn’t attack.
They could, however, still kill POW's, and Chinese.
The Japanese were a people of proud ignorance and many believed that they would continue to fight until there wasn’t an able-bodied human being left to fight. After seeing their cities destroyed, their people turned into a blackened ash, their military blasted back to the Stone Age and the realization that after Germany was destroyed, the Allies would turn full force on them; Japanese officials realized that it was time to admit defeat. The Americans had already cracked the codes encrypting Japanese messages and knew that the Japanese were trying to surrender on their own terms; even the emperor himself was communicating with Soviet Union expressing his wish to have them help in his surrender. In fact, it was kept secret from the public for many months after the final surrender, that Japanese leaders had actually given “five separate surrender overtures” to American officials that were nearly identical to the final terms accepted by the Allies (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/Caq53.hiroshima.html).
Why would they need to surrender with the help of the Soviet Union? Wouldn't discussing it directly with the U.S. be more fruitful?
At this point in time, Japan posed absolutely no threat and had a genuine wish to surrender, however there was a significant obstacle in their way and the Americans knew it. The Japanese would not submit to an unconditional surrender because it would disturb a Japanese tradition 2,600 thousand years old. By surrendering unconditionally, the emperor, an heir to a 2,600 year old dynasty and a man viewed to be a living god by his people would lose his power. “America's leaders understood Japan's desperate position: the Japanese were willing to end the war on any terms, as long as the Emperor was not molested. If the US leadership had not insisted on unconditional surrender -- that is, if they had made clear a willingness to permit the Emperor to remain in place -- the Japanese very likely would have surrendered immediately, thus saving many thousands of lives.” (
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html).
Is Japan really in any position to argue that they should keep their emperor? No. Firstly, they lost a war of aggression, and are in no position to make demands. Secondly, their emperor supported a war of aggression, as evidenced by his surrender speech on the 15th of August. He was more than just a figurehead in 1941. Did we allow Hitler's aides to stay in power after Germany capitulated? I don't see how this would have been any different.
Unfortunately, that same logic was applied on August 6, 1945 when President Truman ordered the Enola Gay to drop the first atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on Hiroshima with the hope that it would end the war and save thousands of lives. A war crime in-and-of-itself, Little Boy detonated 1,900 feet above a
church in Hiroshima, killing roughly seventy thousand civilians in an instant, injuring another seventy thousand, and leaving the survivors to deal with the after effects of radiation poisoning (
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia).
First of all, analyzing the argument construction, good use of rhetoric here by mentioning church. it does make the action seem more horrific.
However, saying that nuking Hiroshima is a war crime is calling the firebombing of Tokyo a war crime, the bombing of Hamburg a war crime, the bombing of Berlin a war crime, and the bombing of every other major city in Europe and Japan a war crime. In terms of eventual destruction, the atomic bombs weren't differentiated by anything. The only real difference is the visual effect, which has a more mental impression than anything else, and the cost of delivering the payload.
Drunk with power, little thought was given as the US airships continued to pour bombs on the heads of helpless Japanese civilians for another two days. Then on August 9th Fat Man, the second Atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. “At 11 o'clock in the morning of August 9, Prime Minister Kintaro Suzuki addressed the Japanese Cabinet: Under the present circumstances I have concluded that our only alternative is to accept the Potsdam Proclamation and terminate the war. Moments later, the second bomb fell on Nagasaki. Some hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died in the two attacks; many more suffered terrible injury and permanent genetic damage. After the war, His Majesty the Emperor still sat on his throne, and the gentlemen who ran the United States had absolutely no problem with this. They never had.” (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/).
Isn't that a slight over exaggeration?
The suggestion made by the previous quote is truly disturbing, but not terribly farfetched. It seems that the true purpose of the bombings of these civilian populated cities was not only to put an end to the war, but it also to give America a chance to flex its newly obtained hegemonic muscles; a chance to show the rest of the world its new toy. General Dwight Eisenhower said in this quote, "Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary. ... I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face. The secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions." (
http://mediafilter.org/caq/).
I won't argue with that point about flexing the hegemonic muscles, but considering it did at the same time end the war earlier, this is just an added benefit.
By the time the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan posed no viable threat to any of the allied forces and there was a significant amount of evidence at the time that they were trying to negotiate their surrender. Had the Americans given diplomacy more time, it is my belief that no atomic weapon would have been needed. Had diplomacy not worked out, a demonstration of the atomic bomb in a non-populated area would have certainly given the Japanese government reason to surrender. "The discovery of nuclear chain reactions need not bring about the destruction of mankind any more than did the discovery of matches. We only must do everything in our power to safeguard against its abuse. Only a supranational organization, equipped with a sufficiently strong executive power, can protect us." (Einstein)
Had we given diplomacy more time, how much of Asia would have been captured by the Soviet Union? They had already completely cleared Manchuria and half of the Korean Peninsula in one week. In the future was plans to invade Hokkaido. If Stalin had done too much fighting against the Japanese, he would have demanded half of Japan under his control, just like in Germany. What would have happened if we had a split North and South Japan? The economic revitalization of South Japan would have been severely impeded, and that of North Japan never made. Look at the difference in economic recovery in postwar West and East Germany. West Germany's economy and standard of living were far superior to that of East Germany following reunification in 1991. This would have happened to the Japanese as well, further damaging the lives of people who already would have been damaged worse.
To be honest, I would have loved to debate against you, because my opposition didn't really care about their side. You would have made the debate vastly more fun.
Blanket statement:
The atomic bombings ended the war earlier, and were the only way to end the war at the date it did. Had we not ended the war through these means, millions of Japanese (and Americans) would have died in either an invasion or concentrated starvation effort (Japanese only). Even if diplomacy had worked, it would have taken precious time that would have seen the bombing of more Japanese cities, the deaths of more POWs and Chinese civilians in mainland Asia, and the subjugation of a larger amount of territory by the Soviet Union, leading to a degradation of Japan's future and a more rapid Communist spread through Asia. The benefits of using nuclear weapons on Japan vastly outweigh any negative effects.
