Hiroshima plus 70 years: "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb"

[Fullfillmer]

Didn't Germany try to send their version of the bomb to Japan to be used against us - late in the war?

 

[Volosaurus rex]

You may be referring to this: "The Japanese also requested materials from their German allies and 560 kg (1,230 lb) of unprocessed uranium oxide was dispatched to Japan in April 1945 aboard the submarine U-234, which however surrendered to US forces in the Atlantic following Germany's surrender. The uranium oxide was reportedly labeled as "U-235", which may have been a mislabeling of the submarine's name and its exact characteristics remain unknown; some sources believe that it was not weapons-grade material and was intended for use as a catalyst in the production of synthetic methanol to be used for aviation fuel" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program).

References cited for this passage are:

Boyd, Carl; Akihiko Yoshida (2002). The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II. Naval Institute Press. p. 164.

Scalia, Joseph M. (2000). Germany's Last Mission to Japan: The Failed Voyage of U-234. Naval Institute Press.

 

[gordonr24]

Great read!

It's unfortunate and absolutely horrific that it happened, but in times of war, you have to think of your own well-being. The dropping of the bombs saved countless American lives from a potential invasion, but on the other end, it cost a lot of innocent Japanese lives.

 

[OneManGang]

The guy I always felt sorry for was a certain Shigeyoshi Morimoto who was hurrying home on the morning of 8 August in Nagasaki to collect his wife and get her and his family out of town. He arrived at 11 A.M.

Morimoto had been working in Hiroshima making anti-aircraft kites (used like barrage balloons to entangle low-flying planes) when Little Boy had exploded. He was protected from the blast by a building. He had made his way from Hiroshima to his hometown. In one of history’s brutal ironies, Morimoto was just describing the pika or bomb flash to his family, “First there is a great blue flash …” At precisely that instant, 1890 feet over the Mitsubishi Torpedo Factory (in another irony this factory had modified the torpedoes for the Pearl Harbor attack) the radar altimeter on Fat Man signaled the detonators to fire and a brilliant blue flash filled the room where Morimoto was telling his tale.

The guy got nuked twice.

Apparently about 165 people boarded a train out of Hiroshima after the bombing there and went to the relative "safety" of Nagasaki and arrived just in time for the second bomb.

The Unluckiest Train Ride - Neatorama

 

[Volosaurus rex]

If you haven't previously seen it, anyone who would like to hear the first-hand accounts of the men who actually flew those fateful missions should tune in for the Smithsonian Channel documentary, "The Men who brought the Dawn." According to this web page (The Men Who Brought the Dawn | Smithsonian Channel), it will be broadcast on Monday, Aug 17 at 2:00pm; Wednesday, Aug 26 at 4:00am; and Saturday, Aug 29 at 2:00pm.

 

[utvolpj]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say God wouldn't be in favor of killing a couple hundred thousand with atomic bombs

 

[OneManGang]

I'll go further out and say that he wasn't in favor of the killing of over 2 million Chinese by the Japanese, the Allied PoWs who were beheaded AND EATEN by their Japanese captors, the 400 thousand or so dead Americans it was going to take to put an end to those murderous bastards, not to mention the several million Japanese who would have died in an invasion.

God is not known for selective outrage, however, one would think that he understands that many times good people have to do bad things to keep bad people from doing worse things.

The atomic weapons were simply different in scale. Once again, the 20th Air Force killed an estimated 750,000 people in one fire raid on Tokyo. The responsibility for those deaths, in my mind, lies with the Japanese militarists who launched the war on the United States and the callow politicians who let them do it.

Read up on the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the Flyboys on Chi Chi Jima, Unit 431, and others and then get back to me about the morality of using atomic weapons to end the war two years before it would have ended otherwise.

 

[utvolpj]

2 years earlier? Goes against what most US military leaders said.

I don't believe the slaughter of innocents by fire bombing or nukes would ever be condoned by a true living God. It also removes any claim on the moral high ground

 

[Volosaurus rex]

"War is cruelty and you cannot refine it, the crueler we make it, the shorter it will be. - William T. Sherman, 1864.

A couple of academic double-domes cooked up the idea but it never went anywhere beyond the water cooler. Post-war, when the Soviets wanted us to be the bad guys, these same chin-pullers were held up as examples of what we should have done.

You have to understand, this was total war. Japanese soldiers not only fought to the death, they committed suicide to keep from being captured. Japanese civilians were of the same mind-set. They had been taught from birth that dying for the Emperor was the highest calling for a Japanese citizen. Japan was not going to quit until the Emperor gave them permission to. Blowing up a few trees wasn't going to get that done. Hell's fire, there was doubt that killing cities with the things was going to do it. After all, 750,000 had died IN ONE NIGHT during a fire bombing attack on Tokyo and a town called Toyama (roughly the size of Knoxville) was 99.6% burned out during a similar raid a few months later.

What shocked the Japanese Emperor was that while the fire raids used 200-300 B-29s, the nuclear missions required but one. He knew we had a lot of bombers and more were on the way.

As soon as word leaked out that Hirohito was going to broadcast his decision to surrender, certain Army officers became convinced that the Emperor had been duped or had agreed under duress and that it was their duty to rise up and free him to resume command of the nation and continue the war to victory. For loyal Japanese, surrender was not only unbearable, it was unthinkable.

The conspirators finalized their plans and focused on preventing the broadcast of the Emperor’s message to his people scheduled for August 14. In the end, their plot was foiled, in large part because of the last B-29 bombing mission carried out the night of August 13-14 which caused a nation-wide blackout and communications shutdown. Unable to communicate effectively, the conspirators failed. Many committed seppuku afterward. The Emperor’s broadcast went ahead on the 14th.


It was that close.

With respect to the fatality estimate of 750,000, are you referring to the mission on 9–10 March ("Operation Meetinghouse") that involved "334 B-29s [which] took off to raid with 279 of them dropping 1,665 tons of bombs on Tokyo"? If so, what is the source for an estimate of 750,000 deaths? I ran across the following projections for that raid:

"The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 83,793 dead and 40,918 wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Historian Richard Rhodes put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low; Mark Selden wrote in Japan Focus:

The figure of roughly 100,000 deaths, provided by Japanese and American authorities, both of whom may have had reasons of their own for minimizing the death toll, seems to be arguably low in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors' accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile (396 people per hectare) and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile (521 people per hectare), the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.

In his 1968 book, reprinted in 1990, historian Gabriel Kolko cited a figure of 125,000 deaths. Elise K. Tipton, professor of Japan studies, arrived at a rough range of 75,000 to 200,000 deaths. Donald L. Miller, citing Knox Burger, stated that there were "at least 100,000" Japanese deaths and "about one million" injured" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo).

Citations for references cited above are:


Selden, Mark (May 2, 2007). "A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq". Japan Focus.

Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. p 599. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks (1984).

Kolko, Gabriel (1990) [1968]. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. pp. 539–40.

Tipton, Elise K. (2002). Modern Japan: A Social and Political History. Routledge. p. 141.

Miller, Donald L.; Commager, Henry Steele (2001). The Story of World War II. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 456.

 

[Volosaurus rex]

2 years earlier? Goes against what most US military leaders said.

I don't believe the slaughter of innocents by fire bombing or nukes would ever be condoned by a true living God. It also removes any claim on the moral high ground

In introductory remarks for the program, "The Men who Brought the Dawn," Ray Gallagher, Ass't Flight Engineer, Bock's Car, offered the following observations in response to subsequent criticisms of the atomic missions:

"There was a monster loose at that time in history. And the monster was war. I said somebody had to kill the monster. . . . When you're not at war, you're a good second guesser. But, when you are at war, your main concern is what do we have that can beat the enemy and stop it all."

Personally, I do not presume to understand how, when, where or why God precisely chooses to intervene in the course of human events. I am thankful, however, that we prosecuted World War II with a greater sense of moral clarity than any war that we fought in the twentieth century. It took every scintilla of that resolve to persevere to the very end in order to gain the "inevitable triumph -- so help us God" that FDR promised on December 8, 1941.

 

[NCFisher]

The responsibility for those deaths, in my mind, lies with the Japanese militarists who launched the war on the United States and the callow politicians who let them do it.

Read up on the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the Flyboys on Chi Chi Jima, Unit 431, and others and then get back to me about the morality of using atomic weapons to end the war two years before it would have ended otherwise.

You mean to refer to Unit 731, not 431.

Why did the Japanese (and Germany) launch war upon the U.S. and were those attacks without provocation? I think those questions need to be answered before we justify our actions against the Japanese by being in a war we perhaps had no business in.

 

[Volosaurus rex]

"Army Air Force radar specialist Jacob Beser was the only man who served on both the Enola Gay in the Hiroshima bombing mission and the Bock's Car three days later when its crew bombed Nagasaki. . . . In this 1985 interview for the Washington Post, Beser was asked if he would do it again:

Given the same circumstances in the same kind of context, the answer is yes. However, you have to admit that the circumstances don't exist now. They probably never will again. I have no regrets, no remorse about it. As far as our country was concerned, we were three years downstream in a war, going on four. The world had been at war, really, from the '30s in China, continuously, and millions and millions of people had been killed. Add to that the deliberate killing that went on in Europe, [and] it's kind of ludicrous to say well, geez, look at all those people that were instantly murdered. In November of 1945 there was an invasion of Japan planned. Three million men were gonna be thrown against Japan. There were about three million Japanese digging in for the defense of their homeland, and there was a casualty potential of over a million people. That's what was avoided. If you take the highest figures of casualties of both cities, say, 300,000 combined casualties in Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki, versus a million, I'm sorry to say, it's a good tradeoff. It's a very cold way to look at it, but it's the only way to look at it. Now looking into tomorrow, that's something else again. I don't have any pat answers for that" (The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb | Mental Floss).

 

[barknoxbrawler]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say God wouldn't be in favor of killing a couple hundred thousand with atomic bombs

Another topic of course so I won't go into depth. But God directed many people to be killed in the OT through battle (by the hand of David), by famine and other ways. Just saying that God is vengeful as well and the bible says so.

 

[WallyBalls]

You mean to refer to Unit 731, not 431.

Why did the Japanese (and Germany) launch war upon the U.S. and were those attacks without provocation? I think those questions need to be answered before we justify our actions against the Japanese by being in a war we perhaps had no business in.

Well, go ahead and answer them.

 

[NCFisher]

Well, go ahead and answer them.

FDR deliberately provoked both Germany and Japan to land the first blow, so as to enter the war - made inevitable by the treatment of Germany at the end of WWI - he had promised to refrain from. He'd waged economic war against Japan since 1939, and provided material support to those fighting the Japanese. Germany had so far avoided U.S. provocation - Lend/Lease, shoot on sight and expansion of maritime zone, directly assisting England in naval action - and FDR estimated correctly that Japan would be more easily prompted.

 

[OneManGang]

Why did the Japanese (and Germany) launch war upon the U.S. and were those attacks without provocation? I think those questions need to be answered before we justify our actions against the Japanese by being in a war we perhaps had no business in.

Germany actually could have presented a huge problem to the FDR administration which was committed to a "Germany first" agreement with the Brits in the event the US became involved in the war. The US had no immediate causus belli with Germany as it had with the Japanese. Hitler solved their problem by declaring war on the United States on 11 December 41 to honor his mutual defense treaty with the Empire.

The US had instituted trade sanctions against the Japanese (particularly steel and oil) in response to Japanese atrocities in China and their occupation of Indo-China (Vietnam, etc.) after the fall of France in 1940. The Japanese government was a creature of the Japanese Army with the PM being a general named Tojo. The Japanese Army believed the US to be weak-willed and unable/afraid to use military force and saw an opportunity to expand Japan's influence through conquest. It is important to note that Emperor Hirohito was kept "in the loop" on all this and approved, either directly or tacitly, the Army's plans for war with the US and Britain.

Hirohito could have stopped World War II in the Pacific with a grunt.

The Army enlisted the Imperial Navy to do something about the US PacFleet battle force at Pearl Harbor. It had been moved there to cover the Philippines. The FDR administration balked at sending the fleet to Subic Bay because they felt it too exposed and also it would be a direct challenge to the Japanese. In the event it didn't matter.

Admiral Yamamoto modified the plan used by his mentor Admiral Togo to begin the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 with a surprise attack on the enemy fleet within moments of the declaration of war by Tokyo. The Pearl Harbor attack was supposed to coincide with the delivery of a message to the US State Department outlining Japan's reasons to go to war. Incompetence at the Japanese Embassy in Washington kept the message out of American hands until several hours AFTER the attack. SecState Cordell Hull of Tennessee was not amused.

The Japanese launched their war because they felt the US was weak and indecisive and that they would never be in a stronger position to wage the war to victory. One shudders to think that had the Strike Forces (Kido Butai) of the Imperial Navy been led into battle by anyone other than the timid and indecisive Nagumo, the outcome of both Pearl Harbor and Midway might have been far different and indeed lengthened the War in the Pacific by several years.

Readings:
Gordon Prange At Dawn We Slept
H.P. Wilmott Empires in the Balance
John Parshall and Anthony Tully Shattered Sword
Max Hastings Retribution
Merion and Susie Harries Soldiers of the Sun

 

[NCFisher]

The U.S. had no causus belli with Japan either save preserving our spot at the banquet table China had become after being carved up and violated by the West; see Opium Wars, Open Door Policy, Boxer Rebellion, The Hundred Years Humiliation. (To be fair, the U.S. arrived late to the Sino pinata party, but we quickly caught on, enjoying the fruits of forcing China to accept opium imports (a banned substance) as payment to rectify trade imbalance, taking over port cities, forcibly inserting Christian missionaries/foreign travelers and nulling China's immigration policies, and casting the Chinese as an underclass to Westerners in their own country.) It seems Japan took note of this pillage of a country it had once respected, decided not to be next in line, and assumed the role of geopolitical power...the same sphere of influence argument we use to insert ourselves globally.

Thus, China was weakened by Western imperialism making her susceptible to Japan's version. But we weren't about to stand for that, having holdings in China and the greater Pacific, and grander visions given form by McKinley and TRoosevelt.

And why were we covering the Phillipines? Because we stole it from Spain, fair and square, then taught those little rascals a lesson - you belong to us now. Surely you see the irony of this line of argument. Guam, Cuba, Latin America, Caribbeans, MEast. China served double duty as our proxy army keeping Japan engaged while we fought in the Atlantic.

Japan attempted conciliation with the U.S. numerous occasions and was met with either more demands or completely ignored; this is known fact among historians. Even PBS'(!) FDR documentary acknowledges his prosecution of the unofficial war. Arguing Japan could have stopped the war anytime is emphasizing the branches at the expense of the roots.

I think our involvement no more or less noble than blunting Japanese hegemony in the region while advancing ours, and our Euro friends. WWII was a veritable gaggle of imperialist Great Powers vying for elbow room.

 

[OneManGang]

I offer fact, you answer with opinion.

Interesting.

 

[NCFisher]

I offer fact, you answer with opinion.

Interesting.

And I thought you were a serious person; what, exactly, do you consider to be merely opinion?

Japan saw it's reflection in China and it's fate foreshadowed by Commodore Perry's 1853 gunship party entering Tokyo harbor demanding isolationist Japan open itself to trade, complete with a display of discharging 73 cannons. He returned a year later with ten gunships to force a treaty. The Japanese accurately saw two choices; modernize industry and military and become the equivalent of U.S. (and Western powers) or become serfs. This incident sired the Meiji Restoration, the birth of modern, imperialist Japan. (The U.S. version of friendship http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/fillmore_perry_letters.pdf)

Further derailing the Robin Hood narrative is FDR's role in Haiti which (surprise!) forcefully opened Haiti to foreign (America and friends) investment, land ownership, diverting 40% of the country's income to pay debts to the U.S. and France which effectively froze internal development, and installing a military dictatorship which ruled until the 1980's. FDR even penned a constitution for Haiti, cementing this...modernization. WHarding spoke of this: Warren G. Harding quote: Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians... The U.S. killed between 15-30K Haitians.

Just following orders?

Rafael Trujillo was perhaps the most savage of southerly dictators killing approximately 20K Haitians, as well as tens of thousands of Dominicans. As president, FDR never flinched in his support of Trujillo, even waging a PR campaign in the wake of the Haitian slaughter. Payback arrived in 1940 as Rockefeller's National City Bank became the sole depository of all revenues and public funds of the Dominican Republic...coincidentally the sole depository also of Haiti.

The notion that we embargoed Japan due to 'atrocities' is pro-American fantasy. It's a self-protective illusion of a time when American presidents admired "men of action" such as Benito and Uncle Joe. We were protecting and expanding empire in Asia, nothing more, as we had been doing for about a hundred years.

I think the Japanese transmission you refer to was actually a refusal of Hull's (and White's) ultimatum, not a declaration of war.

 

[rs16]

Pretty good cartoon by Charlie Daniel in this mornings' fish wrapper.

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II's Top US Military Leaders | ZeroHedge

• General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that 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’.”
• Admiral William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
• Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
• General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
• Ralph Bird, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
• Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
• Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

 

[Tin Man]

[sigh] Twice during August 1945, the atomic bomb was used in an act of war. It’s a fact. It’s history. Rather than arguing about what has been, pray that August 9, 1945 remains the last time an atomic weapon was used.

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II's Top US Military Leaders | ZeroHedge

• General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that 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’.”
• Admiral William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
• Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
• General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
• Ralph Bird, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
• Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
• Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

Since it took Japan a week to decide to surrender after Hiroshima was destroyed, how long would they have drawn out WW2 without being nuked?

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

Since it took Japan a week to decide to surrender after Hiroshima was destroyed, how long would they have drawn out WW2 without being nuked?

Obviously you didn't read the post...

• Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

 

[Thunder Good-Oil]

Obviously you didn't read the post...

• Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

It would two weeks for the war to be over without any nuclear bomb detonating, but it would only take two weeks to end the war without? Yea, right. And the Vietnam War would end quickly as well.