[HN Gopher] Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)
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Publication of Hiroshima in the New Yorker (1997)
Author : Tomte
Score : 54 points
Date : 2021-08-30 17:58 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.herseyhiroshima.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.herseyhiroshima.com)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Navy Admiral William F. Halsey, Third Fleet commander, was
| quoted in the press as saying that the Japanese had been on the
| verge of surrunder before the atom bombs were dropped in the
| summer of 1945 and that the "atomic bomb was an unnecessary
| experiment..."
|
| I suspect that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
| were as much to impress Stalin as for any other purpose.
|
| At the time of the bombings, there were literally millions of
| battle-hardened Soviet troops in Eastern Europe. They were also
| commanded by very able generals (see Zhukov).
|
| If Stalin wanted them to, they could have easily rolled west, and
| the American and British armies would have been no match for the
| Soviet Red Army.
|
| However, the USA had the bomb. I think Hiroshima and Nagasaki
| were at least in part about demonstrating the awesome power of
| the atomic bomb to Stalin and forestalling any temptation he
| might have to continue west.
| jbay808 wrote:
| When I went to high school in Canada, this analysis was more or
| less the standard treatment of the subject. I'm surprised
| you're getting downvoted.
| mezentius wrote:
| The history does not credibly support this analysis. For Halsey
| to say that the Japanese were on "the verge of surrender" is
| somewhat misleading; while the Japanese may have been willing
| to seek a negotiated end to the conflict, they were certainly
| not willing to surrender _unconditionally_ , and in fact were
| throwing away an appalling number of lives in India, New
| Guinea, and islands all across the Pacific to prove this. An
| unconditional surrender was seen as necessary because the
| Western Allies believed that they needed a free hand in the
| postwar period to drastically restructure the political systems
| of the Axis countries and prevent future militarism. If you
| look at the example of the interwar period (in which negotiated
| truces had repeatedly failed in the face of determined
| militarism) and then note the result of the postwar period for
| both the Japanese and German economies, it would be very hard
| to argue that the Allies were wrong.
| mcguire wrote:
| The conditions the Japanese Supreme War Council (made up of
| the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, the Minister of
| War, the Minister of the Navy, and the Chiefs of the Army and
| Navy General Staffs; the only higher authority was the
| Emperor) _were_ willing to accept were:
|
| 1. The Emperor continued unmolested as the head of state,
|
| 2. Japan was responsible for its own disarmament,
|
| 3. There would be no occupation, and
|
| 4. Japan would conduct its own war crime trials.
| mitjak wrote:
| why did you get downvoted? it seems a plausible theory that's
| at least worth discussing / is a reasonable contribution to
| this thread.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| There are very few defensible historical positions that seem
| to rile up unreasonable criticism more than saying the use of
| atomic weapons on Japan might not have been justified,
| usually in the form of uneducated meme responses such as
| "they would never have surrendered" and "it's easy to say
| that now."
|
| Given that we have evidence that many of those who _were_
| there at the time disagreed with the decision and that Japan
| had already been trying to work towards peace through back-
| channels, these responses seem to point to a deep need to
| feel like the United States didn 't unjustifiably kill over
| 100k civilians.
|
| There is little question that the bombings were a better
| strategic choice than Operation Downfall, which would likely
| have killed more on both sides, but to paint this as the only
| alternative is a false dilemma. There is even debate among
| (prominent, non-revisionist) historians and political
| scientists as to whether the bombings were the primary reason
| for the surrender -- contemporary letters from within Japan
| indicate that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria may have
| actually been the primary factor (though the bombings
| certainly played some part, and were a larger factor in
| arguments made by some particular officials).
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Because anyone who knows the actual history, knows that's
| bullshit and OP could have just looked up the facts instead
| of making up something.
|
| Japan was going to fight to the last man/woman/child. They
| were going to have seniors and children fight with sticks.
| The Pacific theater was already one of the bloodiest battle
| fronts in the war and the US was battle weary and didn't want
| to expend another 500,000 Americans to invade Japan. They
| dropped nukes to avoid another extended and unbelievably
| bloody conflict.
|
| Go listen to the Hardcore History podcasts "Supernova in the
| East" and it'll make it much more clear.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I don't think it's bullshit. I think Navy Admiral William
| F. Halsey _did_ say those things.
|
| "The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . .
| It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists]
| had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped
| it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out
| a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before."[1]
|
| Those are the facts... GP made nothing up.
|
| OTOH - the Cold War should be ample evidence of the West's
| distrust of Stalin and USSR generally. I think it's
| entirely plausible the motivation to drop the bomb
| _included_ Soviet deterrence.
|
| [1] http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm
| mezentius wrote:
| I made a post about this above, but the difference
| between a negotiated peace and an unconditional surrender
| is rather crucial. The Japanese were willing to seek the
| former but found the latter politically unacceptable
| until sufficient pressure was applied.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it
| out,
|
| He may have said that, but after reading books on
| Oppenheimer and other scientists at the Manhatten
| Project, I don't believe it is accurate
| diogenescynic wrote:
| The quote exists but doesn't mean it's correct.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| you are right, I am convinced, this was obviously the best
| action the Americans could have done. Why is it so hard for
| people to get that?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| If some of the key figures involved can disagree with
| that assessment, why can't others?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Because there is a lot of evidence that it wasn't the
| case and that we knew it wasn't the case.
|
| The most damning evidence against it being necessary is
| that the Japanese were actively trying to get the Soviets
| to help them negotiate peace in the weeks leading up to
| the bombing. The soviets played them, and didn't carry
| the message since they were secretly in the process of
| staging an invasion against Japan in Manchuria, an event
| that the Japanese knew would be fatal to their war. It's
| worth noting that Hirohito did not order the surrender of
| Japan after hearing of Hiroshima, but after hearing of
| the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria,
| which happened a few hours before Nagasaki.
|
| Much of the reluctance to surrender was around
| guaranteeing that Hirohito could remain. A concession
| that we granted in the end.
|
| Also keep in mind that the nuclear attacks weren't even
| the most destructive aerial attacks that the US
| possessed. The firebombing of Tokyo did more damage to a
| wider area and killed more people. In fact, Hiroshima was
| the 6th most destructive bombing raid as far as land area
| destroyed goes. American forces wiped dozens of cities
| off the map using conventional attacks before Hiroshima.
|
| Before August 6 the Japanese politicians were more than
| aware that the war was lost, and that surrender was
| necessary. There is a lot of the historical record that
| shows this.
|
| There is also a lot of records that the bombing was as
| much a demonstration of power to Stalin as anything else.
|
| Many of the justifications that we see know don't appear
| in the written record until after 1945. You are welcome
| to do the research.
|
| Most serious historians of the time acknowledge that the
| bombings might have shortened the war, but the effect was
| minimal. On the order of a few days or weeks at best.
|
| Most of this is not disputed fact. The interpretation is
| certainly debatable, but we hide the complexity of the
| situation by perpetuating the story that it was either
| nuclear bombings or an invasion that would have killed
| millions.
|
| More info with citations:
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-
| really-bo...
| mcguire wrote:
| https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/52.pdf
| diogenescynic wrote:
| This is conspiracy theory nonsense.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| I suspect (as some have indicated), this is a very
| centric version of the history, but that does not mean it
| is incorrect.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Japan was going to fight to the last man/woman/child.
|
| This is not history, this is a hypothetical.
|
| > They were going to have seniors and children fight with
| sticks.
|
| I suspect this would have been ineffective.
| jp57 wrote:
| It's not an implausible hypothesis that an invasion of
| Japan would have been a larger, and proportionally
| bloodier, version of the takings of Iwo Jima and Okinawa,
| two very bloody battles.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| Right, but at no point were those the only options (even
| according to key military figures).
| misiti3780 wrote:
| The Japanese were not known for surrendering. There were
| mass suicides because they refused to be taken alive:
|
| https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/japanese-mass-
| suicide...
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It's not ineffective in all situations. A single soldier,
| isolated from his group, fighting 10 seniors or children
| simultaneously, is not going to do well. Plenty of people
| are killed in the Middle-East from rock throwing.
| kragen wrote:
| The firebombs the Japanese flew across the Pacific,
| setting fires in the Pacific Northwest of the US, were
| largely built by children.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
| mcguire wrote:
| The problem is that there exist first-hand and second-hand
| (i.e. MAGIC intercepts) primary sources for decisions from
| both sides in the summer of 1945
| (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/) and they don't
| really support the theory. (It's possible you could find some
| reasoning to support the "impress the Soviets" part, but to
| make that the primary motive would be to ignore the
| majority.)
|
| Also, keep in mind that Halsey had a bit of a problem with
| Nimitz and much of the Navy, particularly over the matter of
| two typhoons and Leyte Gulf, so he may not be entirely
| unbiased.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I'm not sure why you getting downvoted. The first one was
| little short of a war crime from what i can see. Blow up a
| mountain maybe, to demonstrate the unlimited power of the
| a-bomb, but why drop it on a populated city? But even if the
| first one can be justified (we only had 2 bombs and they were
| fanatical etc.) why the second bomb? At least give them a bit
| more time to think.
|
| I think maybe this subject gets taught differently in America
| to the rest of the world.
| drocer88 wrote:
| "the American and British armies would have been no match for
| the Soviet Red Army".
|
| U.S. , Britain, Canada and France had millions of battle
| hardened troops, too ... and air and sea supremacy.
| kragen wrote:
| I see people touting the amazing prowess of the American and
| British armies in WWII a lot, and I have to wonder if those
| people are mystified about how Stalin ended up with half of
| Europe. How do they fit it into their worldview?
|
| About a third of the total casualties of World War II were in
| Operation Barbarossa, 25 million out of 75 million, about 14%
| of the Soviet population, mostly within a few months in
| 01941. The battle hardened troops of the US and even France
| could mostly go back home to their families, barring Jody;
| the Soviet troops had, in many cases, had their families
| killed or starved to death by the Germans. And, when it came
| to land combat, the Soviets were enormously outproducing not
| only Germany, though not the US; in 01944, the last full year
| of war, they produced some 17000 tanks, and nearly 20000 in
| 01943. (The US numbers were 37000 in 01944 and 27000 in
| 01943.)
|
| However, Russian tanks had a significant advantage over US
| tanks for combat in Europe: they were in Europe. And so were
| the farms that fed their crews.
|
| So, I'm not sure if they "would have been no match for the
| Soviet Red Army", but I'm sure glad they didn't have to find
| out.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Not only this, but a significant number of the resistance
| movements against the Nazi occupation or Fascist governance
| in France, Italy, etc were organized by Communists or
| sympathetic to them. The Communist Parties maintained
| popularity for decades after WWII partially as a result of
| the role they played in resisting the Nazis, organizing
| resistance, etc.
|
| Remember that the rest of western Europe and North America
| stood by and let Franco overrun Spain while the communist
| movement (small c and big-C) actively tried to fight him.
|
| So there were in fact forces on the ground in many parts of
| Europe that would not have seen potential Red Army invasion
| forces as the same kind of invasion force as the Germans.
| At least for a period of time.
| drocer88 wrote:
| "while the communist movement actively tried to fight".
|
| They also allied with them : https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...
|
| Remember this stuff also : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| History_of_the_French_Communis...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The history is complicated. The Ribbentrop pact was
| within the Communist parties seen as necessary to bide
| time, since the USSR _knew_ the Germany was going to
| invade them. But I would agree, it 's inexcusable in
| retrospect.
|
| I am not an apologist for Stalinism, I am not saying any
| of this was a good thing. I am mostly accused of being a
| Trotskyist, or whatever.
|
| But the role of the Communist movement in resisting
| Nazism in Europe is something not widely understood in
| the Anglo-American sphere. To the point where some on the
| right in the US have now started to conflate the two.
| Which is... nonsense.
|
| Anglo-American post-war triumphalism is/was ridiculous.
| My father grew up in the rubble of the end of the war.
| There were no winners, it was tragedy all around.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, but the actual alliance was in a secret codicil to
| the pact; the public face of the pact was just a truce
| between enemies. Both Hitler and Mussolini came to power
| largely on the strength of their opposition to Communism,
| which is why even a pact of neutrality was so scandalous
| to French Communists.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, this is a good point: the Nazis got much of their
| public support from being opposed to socialism, and so
| the European resistance was largely run by Communists.
| People in the US mostly don't know this and tend to
| respond by shooting the messenger, which I guess is why
| your comment is downvoted like a dirty spammer.
| drocer88 wrote:
| "Russian tanks had a significant advantage over US tanks".
| This is much debated by WWII historians. When the U.S.
| tanks finally did square off against the Soviet tanks, U.S.
| tanks won : https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-Sherman-tank-
| compare-to-th... . U.S. reliability and logistics made up
| for any discrepancies in the specifications.
| kragen wrote:
| I'm not sure who you're quoting when you say, "Russian
| tanks had a significant advantage over US tanks," but I
| don't have any reason to think your quote is true. In
| case you intend that as a paraphrase of what I was
| saying, let me correct that misreading. I was making no
| claims about the relative _quality_ of the tanks; by all
| reports, Soviet tanks were vastly inferior to German
| tanks as well.
|
| Rather, my primary tank-related claim was that the USSR
| was producing enormous _quantities_ of war materiel, as
| exemplified by tanks; in 01943 they outproduced Germany
| almost 2:1 in quantity of tanks, and even in 01944 when
| Germany was catching up, they still outproduced them. The
| quality of that materiel was merely adequate, but it
| still would have represented a very significant military
| threat to the US 's position in Europe, as it had to
| Germany's.
|
| My second claim was that the USSR was in a better
| logistical situation with respect to Europe than the US
| was. I don't think that's controversial, since Moscow is
| _in_ Europe, and so was most Soviet farmland and much
| Soviet arms production.
| drocer88 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_production_during_
| Wor...
|
| U.S. + British + France GDP was 7 times bigger than
| Russia at end of the war. Western allied air supremacy (
| including a nuclear monopoly ) would have obliterated
| Soviet logistics.
|
| The West had the upper hand and Stalin knew it.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I think the wide availability of US and British war
| stories, tales, and legends, relative to those of other
| countries, is probably due to them being in English. I'm
| sure every side has their stories of cunning tricks they
| pulled, daring midnight raids, undercover operations,
| ingenious hardware, extreme training, victory against all
| odds, and everything else. But we hear our stories from our
| grandparents, books, and the English internet. It's less
| common to look across to the other sides and learn about
| how they saw things.
|
| That's one of the reasons this article is very important.
| Someone wrote:
| Not having sea supremacy would mean the overseas countries
| wouldn't stand a chance preventing the USSR from taking over
| Western Europe, but I don't see how having it counts for much
| as a defense against a soviet occupation of Europe.
|
| I also think, but can't find hard numbers, that the USSR had
| more soldiers than the other allies combined (some
| strategists thought the allies would need the remains of the
| German army to help fight the Russians, if it were to come to
| that)
|
| What they may not have had enough was technology. The USA
| provide them with lots of material
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease)
|
| I think there is some truth in saying World War Two in Europe
| was won with American materiel and Russian blood.
|
| That could have been their weak point. The western powers
| might have been able to hold of the larger USSR army by
| gaining air superiority. I'm not sure of that, though, as the
| time the USSR really needed US tech to survive was gone in
| 1945.
| trzy wrote:
| More importantly than their presence in Eastern Europe, said
| battle-hardened troops had advanced into Manchuria and Korea.
| History would have looked quite different indeed if they had
| proceeded to invade Japan.
| thrwway34 wrote:
| They had no experience in successful landing assault
| operations.
|
| And besides, all big cities in Manchuria and Korea were
| captured only after Japanese surrender.
| drocer88 wrote:
| Reds did invade northern Japanese islands and still occupy
| them today.
|
| Yalta agreement carved out areas south of this for the U.S.
| [deleted]
| logshipper wrote:
| More recently, the New Yorker published "The Plague Year" [1] in
| Jan 2021. IIRC, this was the first time since the Hiroshima issue
| that they dedicated almost the entire magazine to a single
| article. I quite liked it, and it was even on the HN front page
| [2].
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/04/the-plague-
| yea... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25616014
| misiti3780 wrote:
| he turned that into a book also:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Plague-Year-America-Time-Covid-ebook/...
| addingnumbers wrote:
| I don't think they linked to the article they are analyzing, so
| here it is:
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
| dan-robertson wrote:
| (And a follow up about 40 years later:
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/07/15/hiroshima-the-...
| )
| gxqoz wrote:
| And a small update from last week on how they discovered some
| rare "white band" copies of the original magazine at a high
| school named for Hersey:
| https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/a-rare-
| discovery...
|
| "The white band had originally been added as a bit of an
| afterthought. The editors knew that Hersey's report was
| shocking, and they quickly realized that the cover they'd
| chosen for the issue--a vibrant, bucolic scene of children
| and families frolicking in a park--might not give readers
| enough warning about the devastating nature of its contents.
| (New Yorker covers rarely have a connection with the contents
| of an issue, but, in this particular case, the dissonance was
| marked.) "My God, how would a guy feel, buying the magazine
| intending to sit in a barber's chair and read it!" one editor
| was said to have thought, during a meeting at the time. So
| the white band was hastily added to about forty thousand
| newsstand copies in New York. (It was not included in the
| national run.) Very few copies of the edition with the
| original band exist today, which is why, as Blume noted, it's
| considered one of the "white whales" of the antiquarian-
| magazine world."
| kragen wrote:
| To be fair, I don't think that link existed when Steve wrote
| this 24 years ago; the New Yorker set up a web site in November
| 01998, and the WABAC machine's first snapshots of that link are
| from 02014:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140723205106/http://www.newyor...
|
| Steve's a good person; I'm sure he would have linked to the
| article he was citing if he could.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| No judgement, I mentioned I didn't spot a link to
| preemptively excuse myself in case it was redundant
| grillvogel wrote:
| There's a guy named Joseph Grew, a former US ambassador to japan
| before WW2 who tried to stop the bombings. Basically he put forth
| the argument that Japan would be willing to surrender as long as
| the emperor could keep his title/powers/etc. Truman removed this
| provision at the last minute, and surprise the surrender was not
| accepted. In the end we proceeded to use the nukes, and then let
| the emperor keep his title anyway.
|
| It's interesting that I never heard of him until watching a
| documentary about this while in Japan.
| Hokusai wrote:
| I read the Bantam books version of Hiroshima before traveling to
| Japan and visiting the city. It gives one perspective on what
| happened there and the reality of the atomic bomb.
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