Hiroshima: necessary?

murder = bad
death = bad
killing = bad
suffering = bad
war = bad for these reasons and plenty of others

I mean we'd ALL like to live in PerfectWorld but we DON'T and we definitely weren't living in it in 1945. Calling it unnecessary is just more 20/20 hindsight and I do believe we've learned our lessons considering that no nuclear weapon has ever been used by anyone for other than testing and research purposes since.

Howzabout, you show me the evidence that "it was necessary" or that anyone "thought it was necessary." What have you got? Assumptions.

and again, even the 'it weren't neccessary' smoking gun you have states the end of the war as no earlier than november 45 - do you think there wouldn't have been any american casualties in those three months?
You're right. I am balancing the deaths of 250000 vs. possible casualties over a couple of months of bombing.

I mean your argument isn't that different from the 'we shoulda invaded' argument, except even less plausible!
Damn that historical record!

Milo, I'm not going to get drawn into this argument with you, that's why I posted the way I did and left it at that -- at this point I myself have no exact conclusion on this matter, like I said two years on this very thread even. But trying to argue that a government might have different goals other than ones officially stated is like saying that the sky is blue, and trying to push this as some sort of arch-surprising revelation here is a goddamn bore.
But I wasn't arguing with you. Your last point just reminded me of something else.

And simply because we can't change the past we shouldn't examine it, examine the popular mythology of the past?

http://www.doug-long.com/hst.htm

an excerpt:

7/18/45 Letter to Bess Truman:

"...I've gotten what I came for - Stalin goes to war [against Japan] August 15 with no strings on it. He wanted a Chinese settlement [in return for entering the Pacific war, China would give Russia some land and other concessions] - and it is practically made - in a better form than I expected. [Chinese Foreign Minister] Soong did better than I asked him. I'll say that we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won't be killed! That is the important thing."

and...

7/18/45 Diary Entry:

"P.M. [Prime Minister Winston Churchill] & I ate alone. Discussed Manhattan [atomic bomb] (it is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told P.M. of telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace. Stalin also read his answer to me. It was satisfactory. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time."

I was stopped at a redlight today behind an old Ford Bronco that had "kill 'em all" "go get 'em Bush" and "BOMB IRAQ" shoe-polished on the rear window.

Maybe if that person had any thoughts of questioning his government, he wouldn't be so supportive of pre-emptive war.

This is a discussion on Gar Alperovitz's book on Hiroshima.

But I'm not out specifically to change people's views to fall in line with mine. Even if I were, I wouldn't worry about it on a small-scale like this.

put words in other peoples mouths
Funny, when accused of this, I immediately asked what was meant by the statement and got a "well, yeah, you're right."

and then demand they defend statements they never made (show me a single post calling Hiroshima necessary by the people you accuse of doing so),
Where did "accuse" anyone of "calling Hiroshima necessary"? The one person who did so, in my reply, I noted that they did so "for rhetorical purposes."

What I see a lot of people doing is making a half-assed condemnation. "Well, I don't really support it, but it's not like Harry Truman and the military higher-ups were war criminals. They just killed a quarter-million civilians to serve no actual military or humanitarian purpose."

Let me ask you, had the Japanese managed to build a bomb and take out, say, San Francisco - how would you feel? Would they have been "favoring Japanese lives" over "the enemy"? Is that acceptable? Does being an "enemy population" make everyone a viable target?

and do anything and everything to make sure no thought will be provoked other than 'wow, whatta belligerant asshole' - 80% of your posts on this thread are the same as 80% of your posts on other threads.
You're right, when it comes to defending mass murder, or just making it a joke - see your first posts today - I am a belligerent asshole. Gosh golly, lock me up, I don't find the slaughter of non-combatants to be a non-issue or funny!

You've still done nothing to convince me you're not a right wing plant.
Which kind? Fern?

If you're going to make baseless accusations and character attacks, you should at least be man enough to back them up.

Oooh, you really got me there.

a right wing plant - see also rnc funding of nader 2000 campaign

At least I'm in excellent company, then.

what does it say about our macho sensibilities that we wouldn't even consider peace without Japan totally capitulating? why not blockade japan let them rattle their bamboo spears? why wasn't humiliating their military and dismantling their empire enough to expiate pearl harbor?

so that's what's on my mind. who was it who said "it's not the future i'm afraid of. it's the past."

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic explosion was certainly not necessary for a military victory by the allies (USA + British Empire + USSR) over Japan. By August of 1945 Japan was incapable of effective military resistance. However, it was, by most political measures, a very, very expedient act.

Its use was explained to the US public and to the world as necessary to save 'a million lives' during an invasion of the Japanese home islands. This is pure speculation and must ever remain so. The only important question about this speculation is whether it was believed by Truman or merely officially employed by him to justify morally an act that had too many political attractions to resist.

There is no way to know the answer to this question. Among other things, humans are capable of hiding the truth of their own motives even from themselves, and this inner evasion only grows stronger as time passes and all that is left of the action or decision is the residue of memory. By the time Truman died he may have firmly believed the truth of the 'million lives saved', even if he didn't especially believe it on the day he gave the order.

As a Canadian, I was always particularly displeased with this quote from then Prime Minister Mackenzie King:

It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.
-- William Lyon Mackenzie King (uncensored diaries) (I re-located that quote at http://dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2005/04/05/canada_rac.html , however I definitely had a page number from those diaries when I cited them in my paper)

Eisenhower:

in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.... "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him 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'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude...

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki 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.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

HERBERT HOOVER

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over.

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled... Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE

(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

From a study of the evidence and in particular the declassification of a lot of Truman's post-war NSC discussions and some of Eisenhower's remarks (like the ones posted up thread), I'd say it was militarily unnecessary.

well yes of course it's pure speculation. it was equally pure speculation that the a-bombs would bring about surrender. but speculation involves weighing things up, and the important thing is not just truman's moral qualms but whether the speculation was on balance right.

the idea japan had stopped fighting by summer 1945 is insane.