Hiroshima: necessary?

Of course no one has an answer to this, nor do I need one. Since Truman is the one for whom "the buck stops here", and it was his decision that caused this debate, I believe the heavier burdon of proof to fall on the "yes" decision. Albert Einstein "said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive". So why is it that everyone wants to believe Truman's motives but not those of others like Eisenhower, Leahy, MacArthur, Zsilard and Einstein?

Exactly! MacArthur was anything but peace loving, and even he was opposed to the use of the bombs. Since he was in charge of the Pacific war, and subsequently Japan's occupation, I find his opinion on the matter to be highly relevant.

you really need to read Rise of the Vulcans! Armitage is a piece of work all right, but he comes of positively rosy compared to the rest of that generation. thousands of Vietnamese owe him their lives, personally, post-Saigon

Why FDR made unconditional surrender his policy and why, apparently, Truman followed it, is something I never can quite fathom.

I agree with your statement M. Ironic that "we" allowed them to retain the Emperor after dropping the bombs anyhow.

Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944. The order dealt with the disposal and execution of all Allied POWs, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place.[36] It is also likely that, considering Japan's previous treatment of POWs, were the Allies to wait out Japan and starve it, the Japanese would have killed all Allied POWs and Chinese prisoners.

Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo's Catholic University, and an eyewitness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima wrote:

"We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians."[37]

Japanese government did not decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme War Council was still split, with the hard-liners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials would be conducted, and no occupation of Japan would be allowed. Only the direct intervention of the emperor ended the dispute, and even then a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender.

One of the most notable individuals with this opinion was then-General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote in his memoir The White House Years:

"In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. 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."[47][48]
Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General Douglas MacArthur (the highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater), Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials),[48] Major General Curtis LeMay,[49] and Admiral Ernest King, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard,[50] and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.[51]

Curtis Le May??!!

Others have argued that the U.S. should have waited a short time to gauge the effect of the Soviet Union's entry into the war. The U.S. knew, as Japan did not, that the Soviet Union had agreed to declare war on Japan three months after V-E Day, and the Soviets did indeed attack Japanese forces in Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands on August 8, 1945. This represented the loss of any possibility that the Soviet Union would serve as a neutral mediator for a negotiated peace, as well as the entry into combat of the Red Army, the largest active army in the world. Because no U.S. invasion was immediately imminent, it is argued that the U.S. had nothing to lose by waiting several days to see whether these events would convince Japan to surrender without use of the atom bomb. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's research has led him to conclude that the atomic bombings themselves were not even the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, he contends, it was the swift and devastating Soviet victories in Manchuria that forced the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945.[54]

Your intelligence is staggering Timbit. So I disagree with you, with research and citations, and that makes me "a goddamed fucking idiot (that) aught to learn to read".

I would say that your childishness simply proves my points, but that would not be fair to those that disagree with me but use rational discourse and research to do so.

Sherman justified his brutalizing of the South by implying that it would shorten the war and thus actually minimize the final Southern tally of suffering and a man like Le May did very much the same with regard to his approach in Asia, though he did admit that, had the U.S. lost, he fully expected to be tried as a war criminal. Without 20/20 hindsight, it's vey hard to gauge how one's decisions will affect the future, and strangely, whether a leader depends on popularity, aquiescence or elections, he or she must sometimes pay attention to popular grievances in formulating the policies of war and peace - see Koizumi and the shrine (I have seen the ugly side of Japanese nationalism with their strident flags and bullhorns in the streets of Tokyo) or Truman's echo of the angry and often racist sentiment of 40's American men on the street to beat the hell out of 'the Japs', and to merely say that they should hold themselves to higher standards is, though sometimes commendable, sometimes terribly easy when the actual responsibility doesn't actually weigh upon one's shoulders.

You're an absolute fool and I'll not repeat myself any further on this thread. You infuriate me with your pompously worded and completely, COMPLETELY redundant additions to this thread. You are in no way genuinely interested in discussing the topic or perusing what's already been said long ago because you came here to make incredibly dull observations about the sanctity of human life and fell self-righteous. You're actually a pretty terrible excuse for a sentient being and I am sick of reading posts by people like you. Fuck off and die.

M. White: OTM.

M, once again I can agree with your statement. As one who has also studied 'clio's craft', I know that it is unfair for me to use Western 21st century values to judge a person who was in control of one of the most powerful nations 60 years ago. However, what I can do is read the opinions of his contemporaries and do my best to objectively (not possible, I know) use that information as if they were a jury of his peers, so to speak.

-- TOMBOT (tombo...), September 27th, 2006.

It really shouldn't be this way, but you can't begin to imagine how much it pleases me that I have infuriated such an apparently belligerent person as you Tom.

I also simply can't resist pointing out the humour in the following statement: completely, COMPLETELY redundant additions to this thread That's hilarious man! Well said.

It's also funny that you claim that I have brought nothing to the conversation, yet it is you that is ranting and swearing.

So Tom, admit it. You're also one of those who still thinks the weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq aren't ya.

I completely agree gear.

So does he just need to tip a few right now then?

That explains a whole lot.

Having any luck with that drink recipe yet M? ;)

um, if roosevelt allowed the bomb to be made in the first place why would he have forbidden it to be used against a country we were still at war with?

*Yawn*

Seriously, why are you people even talking to this person? I'm completely floored.

Squirrel, don't you have any huffing to do?

http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/japan/bonds1.jpg

xposts

I wonder if there's was a war stamp discount on larger amounts? Maybe, 60 bullets for $1.00.

I would surmise that he was behind the building of the bomb because he knew he was in a race with Germany over who would accomplish it first. That doesn't mean he actually wanted to use it on a city or two. The reason Einstein is relevant to the discussion at all is because he had originally sent a letter to FDR to advise him to start the program:

In 1939 Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt that was drafted by the scientist Leo Szilard. Received by FDR in October of that year, the letter from Einstein called for and sparked the beginning of U.S. government support for a program to build an atomic bomb, lest the Nazis build one first.

Einstein did not speak publicly on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view:

"Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate." -Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1

I was in no way attempting to say that Einstein's opinions about FDR were true. I was simply adding another name to the movers and thinkers of the era who were opposed to the use of the bomb at the time.

Heh heh heh heh I missed this earlier. Ally, I can certainly see how you would see that quote from "A Beautiful Mind" would seem pretentious as hell. It seems I fergot to mention that the characters were discussing this very debate, which is why it seemed appropriate to me at the time.

Imagine this: It is August 1, 1945. Everything about the war has occurred exactly as history indicates except for one item - the Trinity test of the first uranium bomb failed because the design was wrong, and Los Alamos determines that the design flaws will take several years to fix.

Now ask: could the war with Japan successfully be ended within that time frame, without the bomb's availability? If so, then the bomb was not (strictly speaking) necessary to end the war, but only sufficient.

It is pretty clear to me that the bomb was not necessary by that time. That is why the question in thread is probably the wrong question in my view. The answer is too obvious.

By the same token, there is no doubt whether the bomb was sufficient to end the war, as the events of history prove that it was.

I am pretty sure Truman knew this, too. He had a weapon sufficient to end the war, but not strictly necessary. Under those conditions he was ultimately responsible, as no one else was, for weighing the pros and cons of using it and deciding what approach would provide the "best" result. That is why I focus on him. It was in his hands exclusively. No one else. No one. Period.

Since Truman, like any other person, could not foretell the course of the future with any accuracy or great confidence, he simply did the best he could and selected the line of reasoning that seemed to him to be the strongest. We do not know his reasoning, only the outcome of it and the official explanantion for it.

In arguing over the merits of this decision, it seems to me that we have to grant that Truman could not have known what answer was "correct" and neither could we, in his place. We, too, would have been reduced to doing our best, choosing the strongest line of reasoning we could identify, and sticking to it.

Our basic problem now, in 2006, is that we cannot discover the actual line of reasoning Truman based his decision on and so we cannot effectively either criticize it or commend it. We are blind men feeling an elephant.

If we consider the different question of whether the bombs ought to have been dropped, then we immediately engage in speculations similar to those that limited Truman's view of the future outcome of his decision; we cannot say what would have happened with any accuracy or great confidence. We can argue from probability only.

I don't doubt there are justifications in Truman's autobiography or in the records of Dean Acheson and George Marshall; but I'm not going to dip into those at the moment.

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." - General George Patton

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/08/07/why_did_japan_surrender/?page=full

interesting!

we've argued about this on other threads, but i don't think the nuclear bombing are morally special or different from, like, the plain old bombings we were doing

Nagasaki was necessary because it occurred on 9 August, which is also my birthday

― dave q, Monday, 20 August 2001 Bookmark

The real reason for this revival...

The important part of Hasegawa's argument is that Nagasaki was totally needless. We couldn't give them a week to surrender? And the third bomb was on its way!

But I have a lot of problems with that article:

1. Yes, Tokyo's firebombing was worse. But Tokyo was essentially a tinderbox-- a forest of paper and wood. The atomic bombs showed that one single weapon could obliterate any city. There are important psychological and practical effects to that.

2. A big reason that the Japanese likely weren't pushed to surrender by the atomic bombs is that they didn't know what the fuck happened. At that point most of Japan's military leadership was secluded in a bunker and they weren't able to get a full picture of what had really happened in Hiroshima. Indeed there was some speculation that the US was exaggerating. If they had actually known fully what the Americans had done, and what they were threatening to do again and again, who knows what their reaction would have been?

3. The worst part of the article is the idea that this somehow disproves nukes as a deterrent. My usual conception of nuclear deterrence is that nukes are an amazingly powerful weapon that can literally destroy an entire country. It isn't that one nuclear bomb is so horrible. It's that theoretically we could destroy EVERY city in a country. Complete obliteration is the "deterrence" of nuclear warfare, especially with ICBMs in play. And again, nukes are just more powerful than anything else.

Hasegawa doesn't (and probably can't) bring up the cabinet meeting where Hirihito bascially overrode his govmt and told them a last-ditch stand was off the table. Was he more influenced by the Soviet declaration of war or the bomb? How about both? It was definitely one of the first rounds of the Cold War, regardless, and as I have increasingly come to think, Truman could not have afforded to NOT use the bombs since their existence would at some point or another have become public and mourning mothers and families would have excoriated him.