Day of Trinity

[cjolley]

Sad to say, but neither bombing came even close to being the deadliest event of the war.
Not even the deadliest single bombing of a Japanese city.

Look at it in historical context. People made decisions like they always do, in the context of their time. The world had become inured to violence and death on a grandiose scale.

[az]

Read up on this, then: The one bomb certainly was enough, many even argue it wouldn't have taken the one. Japan was on its knees, oil reserves depleted. The first bomb could have been demonstrated in the waters near Tokyo.

EDIT: To TX.

[az]

I know, Chuck. That still doesn't make it right, much less in retrospect. Commemorating the bombings without even saying one word about the vicitms now is appaling.

[TransformX]

And risk people believing it was a miracle and that they're somehow protected from harm by the divine emperor?
If in doubt about it, check current fanatics.

I wonder though, how come the Japanese didn't surrender till after the bombing of Nagasaki.. They had more than enough time to do so between the the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_....S._occupation

[cjolley]

...

I wonder though, how come the Japanese didn't surrender till after the bombing of Nagasaki.. They had more than enough time to do so between the the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Possibly because the day prior to Nagasaki the USSR abrogated the USSR Japanese Neutrality Pact and declared war on Japan and that is the real reason Japan surrendered.

Or, GASP!, maybe things can happen for a combination of reasons and a nice neat simplicity on why a global scale war came and went isn't obtainable because the reality was not nice, neat, or simple.

[Jessterw]

One thing no one has pointed out is that Japan offered near unconditional surrender before any bombs were dropped. All they asked was to remain a sovereign nation and that they be allowed to keep the - essentially ceremonious - role of Emperor around. We refused, bombed them, and then allowed them to have exactly what they asked for.

It could be said that we used the bombs as a message to Russia. I don't think anyone but the powers-that-were could answer that and I doubt they'd say anything but the official line that we've all been spoon-fed.

Did it work as a deterrent? In some ways I'd say yes, but that deterrent isn't enough in the modern age when we're talking about terrorism and genocide. The bombs were a high price to pay for such a relatively short period of 'peace'.

[Dr Mordrid]

Partially true but a huge factor was the slow communications of the day, impaired further by the destruction of Japans infrastructure.

After the Potsdam Declaration Prime Minister Suzuki met with the press and said;

"I consider the Joint Proclamation a rehash of the Declaration at the Cairo Conference. As for the Government, it does not attach any important value to it at all. The only thing to do is just kill it with silence (mokusatsu) it. We will do nothing but press on to the bitter end to bring about a successful completion of the war"

The meaning of mokusatsu, literally "kill with silence", can range from "ignore" to "treat with contempt". Suzuki's statement, particularly its final sentence, leaves little room for misinterpretation and was taken as a rejection by the press, both in Japan and in the US.

No further statement was made in public or through diplomatic channels to alter this.

On July 30th Ambassador Sato wrote that Stalin was probably talking to the Western Allies about his dealings with Japan.

"There is no alternative but immediate unconditional surrender if we are to prevent Russia's participation in the war.

On August 2nd Togo wrote to Sato,

" ... However, it should not be difficult for you to realize that ... our time to proceed with arrangements of ending the war before the enemy lands on the Japanese mainland is limited, on the other hand it is difficult to decide on concrete peace conditions here at home all at once. "

Truman had already determined that over 1 million men would be required for an invasion of the Japanese mainland and casualty estimates ran as high as 50% just on the American side. The decision was made to end the war with minimal US losses; enough Americans had died and being President our troops were his primary concern.

August 6th Hiroshima was Bombed. Japan had simply run out of time.

I had several relatives in WW-II, a few in the Pacific but several in Europe. As the war in Europe ended the boys there were not being readied to go home, they were packing for transfer to the Pacific and the invasion of Japan.

My father and all but one of his brothers plus my mothers older brother would have been there, and if the estimates were correct half of them would not have come home. That could well have meant me and most of my cousins would never have been born; we were all 'boomers' born after the war. So much for our children.

Should they have dropped them? Damn Skippy!!

[Jessterw]

A bomb off the coast would have worked just as well I imagine. Then again it might not have.

Of course we inflicted far more causalities with the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Japan wasn't exactly innocent with their actions in China (or elsewhere). So it's obviously going to be debatable how 'bad' the A-bombs actually were in the grand scheme of things.

*Shrug*

I just can't justify the slaughter, yes slaughter, of those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We're not talking just soldiers - there were women and children as well. Your life for theirs.

[Dr Mordrid]

Over 1/3 of their civilian populations had left before the attacks and much of the remainder worked in war related jobs. The rest were military as both cities had large contingents; Hiroshima had a huge military depot and Nagasaki was a naval shipyard. This made both military targets.

At least we took Kyoto off the target list.

[Jessterw]

That doesn't change the fact that there was still a large civilian population that remained and many of those who worked in "war related jobs" were in fact children. A good portion of those youth who were indeed mobilized to work in military-related industries. Upwards of 6,000 of these youth died in Hiroshima's center where the A-bomb was dropped.

Then there's the fact that the bombs were not aimed at the areas of either town that had any military significance. In Nagasaki there were very few military deaths and the death toll in Hiroshima was largely comprised of civilians not military personnel.

The cities were chosen because they were of the few that hadn't yet been devastated by bombings.

In fact, Eisenhower commented years after the war that there was no need to use what he called "that awful thing." In addition, William Leahy, Truman's chief of staff during the war, said, "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan."

Edit: I guess it's worth noting that we had made preparations to bomb Japan with yet more A-bombs had they not surrendered. Then there's the fact that some more prominent Japanese have made statements to the effect that the bombs were inevitable, that the civilian casualties were regrettable but expected given Japans waging of 'Total War', and that in many ways they kept Japan from being 'invaded' by Russia.

[Sasq]

the Hiroshima A bomb was targeted over the central business district, more specifically point zero was at a T junction on a bridge.

Jesse is right, a lot of children died in the blast, as well as a lot after due to leukemia.

Yes, a large number of people died instantly, also a hell of a lot of people died in the following weeks, their insides being eaten out from radiation poisoning, doing things like coughing up their larynx's.

Deaths due to the bombing continued for years after.

There WAS NO JUSTIFYABLE reason to bomb, Truman already knew Japan was ready to surrender, and as Jesse noted, under the conditions that they were eventually given.

[Nowhere]

Isn't it also a bit ironic that if US would accept Japan surrender on proposed terms (which were later agreed to anyway, as I understand), thereofre not dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, possibly the issue with North Korea and nuclear weapons wouldn'r exist now...

[Dr Mordrid]

They would exist. The genie was out of the bottle as soon as Enrico Fermi and his group discovered fission in 1934 and by 1940 most physics grad students at major universities knew that a bomb was at least possible. This alone made it inevitable, if not in the US than certainly in future totalitarian states

In fact Germany was researching the bomb before we were but Werner Heisenberg (developed quantum mechanics and later the "uncertainty principle") very likely sabotaged their program. He was loyal to Germany, but not to the Nazi's...thank God.

The argument has been made, and quite effectively, that the horrors of the Japanese bombing prevented a war between the Soviet empire and the west for 40+ years after WW-II. The problem is that technology proliferated by Siemens, Urenco and other European corporations, their governments and the Russians has now enabled rogue states to make them.

Of course the US has had lapses; notably when the Clinton Administration allowed the export of precision ball bearing equipment to China, a necessity for creating MIRV (multiple independent re-entry vehicle) nuclear warheads.