[HN Gopher] History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo durin...
___________________________________________________________________
History's deadliest air raid happened in Tokyo during World War II
(2020)
Author : Tomte
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-02-16 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| q_andrew wrote:
| Malcom Gladwell did a great segment on his podcast Revisionist
| History about this. He talks about the schools of thought in the
| US military about who and what to bomb that lead to these
| campaigns. It is extremely tragic that these citizen-heavy areas
| were absolutely pulverized. There's evidence that the US military
| used similar techniques in the Korean war.
| InTheArena wrote:
| So just curious - the Japanese (unlike every other
| industrialized power) moved their factories into their urban
| and rural areas to protect them - What alternative would have
| you suggested that would still eliminate the ability of the
| Japanese to build machines of war?
|
| From wikipedia: "Over 50% of Tokyo's industry was spread out
| among residential and commercial neighborhoods; firebombing cut
| the whole city's output in half."
|
| If a single raid in Germany had cut the total Ruhr's capacity
| by 50%, allied bombers would have tried to do that every day of
| the war.
|
| That Japanese did this decentralization even though it cost
| them the ability to scale up their production. This is why
| Japanese production completely collapsed as the war moved
| forward, unlike the Germans, Soviets and Americans who all had
| their production skyrocket throughout the war. That's how
| committed they were to using their population as shield to
| protect it from the inevitable bombers.
|
| So tragic it was - but let's remember that this program was
| deliberate by the Japanese leaders - a deliberate effort to use
| their own population as civilian shield to continue their rape
| and massacre of the rest of Asia.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >There's evidence that the US military used similar techniques
| in the Korean war.
|
| By our own army's admittance, we conducted similar bombing of
| basically every North Korean city and town. We dropped 160,000
| tons of bombs on Japan, 635,000 tons on North Korea.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Tonnage doesn't tell the whole story. While I'm unsure of the
| makeup of the bombs dropped on NK, a large part of the bombs
| dropped on Japan were incendiaries.
|
| Japanese construction was uniquely suited to the creation of
| "firestorms", and the vast majority of the effect of US
| bombing Japan is WW2 was caused not by the bombs themselves,
| but through the fires set by them.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| We dropped over 30,000 tons of napalm on North Korea as
| well. Our firebombing was more effective if anything,
| here's Air force General Curtis LeMay's words on our
| actions.
|
| >We went over there and fought the war and eventually
| burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or
| another, and some in South Korea, too."
| tpowell wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed his Revisionist History podcast on this
| and the book it bore that received the same audio treatment:
|
| https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-bomber-mafia-a-drea...
| panick21_ wrote:
| Malcom Gladwell is a popular journalist, I highly recommend
| reading books on this topic from actual historians. Gladwell
| wrote on all kinds of stuff and its nowhere near as well
| researched as what actual historians bring to the table on
| these questions. He repeats poplar myth type stories.
|
| Learning about Japan, go to something like The Pacific War
| Trilogy by Ian Toll. It is new and well researched with lots of
| original research.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Gladwell's and Toll's accounts of the firebombing of Tokyo
| don't differ in any radical way.
|
| Hell, if anything, Toll and Gladwell reinforce each others'
| point. Toll also goes on to explain that the same thing that
| happened to Tokyo happened in Nagoya, Kobe, Osaka, and pretty
| much every other major Japanese city.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I don't know about that specifically as I have not read
| Gladwell's book, I have just read a number of comments from
| people I tend to trust critical of some of his claims.
| ptha wrote:
| Yes, I believe he did multiple RH podcast episodes on this. He
| has also released a book: "The Bomber Mafia: A Story Set in
| War". [1]
|
| I think the first I heard of the Tokyo firebombing during WWII
| was in the Errol Morris documentary: "The Fog of War: Eleven
| Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara".
|
| Robert McNamara was an officer under Curtis LeMay. _He says
| LeMay once said that, had the United States lost the war, they
| would have been tried for war crimes, and agrees with this
| assessment._ [2]
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Mafia-Story-Set-
| War/dp/02415...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War#In_The_Fog_of_W...
| adolph wrote:
| I found "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of
| Robert S. McNamara" to be an interesting lens to understand
| the US leadership context at depth.
|
| Another interesting viewpoint is taken by the below Foreign
| Policy article "The Dangerous Illusion of Japan's
| Unconditional Surrender"
|
| _A restive public and increasingly assertive political
| leaders questioned if victory, defined as Japan's
| unconditional surrender, could be achieved at a tolerable
| cost. The atomic bombs and Soviet entry into the war against
| Japan cut short that debate and produced swift decision where
| none had seemed likely. That sudden reversal of fortunes
| obscured for later generations the extent to which U.S.
| strategy had been unhinged by Japanese resistance and the
| splintering of unity at home. It also made the ceremony in
| Tokyo Bay seem inevitable and reproducible._
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/13/vj-day-the-dangerous-
| il...
| trasz wrote:
| It's extremely tragic that American war criminals never got
| punished.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Victors never do. But they do write history books.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| The most egregious war criminals among the Japanese - who
| obviously lost the war - weren't even punished.
|
| Shiro Ishii, the leader of Unit 731, among them:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiro_Ishii
| trasz wrote:
| That's true - some of those went unpunished. Even then, at
| least Japan stopped committing further atrocities.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| from the wiki page
|
| > there was no international treaty or instrument protecting
| a civilian population specifically from attack by aircraft at
| the time
|
| reference
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130425044944/http://www.icrc.o.
| ..
| trasz wrote:
| Holocaust was legal too. And yet the allies succeeded at
| prosecuting main offenders.
| q_andrew wrote:
| Yes. There's even some evidence that chemical warfare via
| bombing was done in Korea, something they really should have
| known was a terrible thing to do.
| dundarious wrote:
| I'm quite excited for the Blowback podcast season 3, coming
| out this summer. The new subject is the Korean war. Season
| 1 and 2, on the Iraq wars and the Cuban missile crisis
| respectively, are my favorite podcasts.
| refurb wrote:
| throwaway73838 wrote:
| I'll throw in mine. I think if we look at Japanese culture and
| actions, Kamikaze, suicide, honor, they were highly averse to
| surrendering.
|
| I think once two of their cities were completely disappeared,
| they realized that they, and everything they loved could be
| evaporated at any moment.
|
| It would be utterly insane to continue under these circumstances.
|
| The question of would they have surrendered otherwise - i don't
| believe so. I don't think that's something we should have had to
| find out, either. I think people were exhausted by that point and
| just wanted the war to end.
| pinephoneguy wrote:
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It drives me nuts that the same story about Hiroshima and
| Nagasaki gets dragged out every year without any
| contextualization of just how bad WWII was.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Why? That atrocities were common during the war doesn't make
| nuking civilian targets acceptable.
| nradov wrote:
| Those weren't civilian targets. Both cities contained
| military facilities and factories.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware of the doublespeak used to justify bombing
| major civilian population centers. I still would object to
| being bombed merely for living in a city, so object to
| bombing others for the same reason.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Please tell me how the US should have reacted to how they
| would have won the war while considering your moral
| principles.
|
| Please explain this when you make comments like that.
|
| And please also explain how many additional US soldiers
| (not to mention soldiers and civilians in China and other
| Asian nations) would you think acceptable to fight the
| war according to your moral principles.
|
| If for example the Nazi put a single German child into
| the guard house of the synthetic fuel production
| facility, would you not destroy it?
|
| Its easy to be critical, but please actually explain what
| your moral principles would have been and how you would
| have applied them. And can you make a credible case that
| these principles would have lead to less overall
| suffering.
|
| I am gently curious what your logic is and what
| alternative strategy you would advocate.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (1) Because it's part of a general hatchet job against
| nuclear energy
|
| (2) It erases history. Really crazy stuff went down during
| the Korean war and people don't know about it. If the
| Japanese had spent 1% of the effort making amends for their
| crimes against China and other Asian countries that's gone
| into hand wringing over Hiroshima things would be very
| different in Asia today. It's nearly forgotten that the U.S.
| was slow to demobilize after WWII because it thought war
| against the Soviet Union was likely, and it was just as much
| a goal to intimidate the Soviets as it was to intimidate the
| Japanese.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| How is dropping a nuke any less acceptable than a firebombing
| run? It's the same number of dead civilians in both cases,
| yet nuclear weapons are the ones that get all the pushback.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Neither are acceptable, I was not trying to argue that one
| was morally superior just that the presence of one dies not
| justify the second.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| jmpman wrote:
| My grandfather was a US army tank commander who was part of the
| Okinawa invasion prior to the end of the war. As much as I'd like
| to criticize the atomic bomb, I probably wouldn't be here had it
| not been used. My grandfather would have been required to
| continue the fight through the Japanese home islands, and likely
| perished.
| bonsoir wrote:
| It's way more complicated than that, I know that the US
| narrative is quite strong, but taking a step back is a good
| thing here, there's way more ambiguity than some may realise:
| https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/debate-over-japanese-...
| dandare wrote:
| I use this example when discussing the context of the Hiroshima
| and Nagasaki atomic bombing. While any bombing is tragic, the
| atomic bombs are not worse than other. This single air raid
| killed more people than Little Boy or Fat Man, and while hundreds
| of thousands of people died in the March-June strategic bombing
| of all major Japanese cities
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Firebombing...,
| the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender.
|
| I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.
| huevosabio wrote:
| Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast episode on this, he called
| it Logical Insanity [0]. The main argument being that by the
| time of the atomic bombs, all powers had scaled their
| "strategic bombings" of civilians to a level that made the
| atomic bombs just a small step in the logical conclusion of the
| path of the war.
|
| We should not judge the atomic bombings without the context of
| US, UK, USSR and Japanese bombings of civilians.
|
| [0] https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
| history-42-blitz-...
| leto_ii wrote:
| > I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.
|
| I used to share that same conventional view, but the following
| comprehensive piece really changed my mind:
| https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hiroshima-nagasaki-ameri...
| gumby wrote:
| For many many years I didn't understand why the atomic bomb was
| considered somehow "worse" than mass firebombing like Tokyo or
| Dresden.
|
| In the end a friend gave me a good explanation (ironically a
| Japanese friend who'd attended high school in the US). He said
| it seemed "unfair" because only one bomb was dropped, while in
| a mass attack, seemingly much more effort is expended by the
| attacker and, more importantly, the target has a "chance to
| fight back" (forget how ineffective anti aircraft fire was in
| those days, and still is).
|
| After learning that, when this topic came up I would query
| about where the objections lay and surprisingly, my friend's
| explanation was quite common -- probably the majority -- even
| if the person didn't frame it that way.
|
| A disturbing quirk of human nature
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| "I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives."
|
| Anything to justify the bombing, huh?
| thomasmarriott wrote:
| '...Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most
| cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed,
| incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should We
| continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate
| collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it
| would lead to the total extinction of human civilization...'
|
| -- Hirohito, August 14,1945
| the_af wrote:
| > _I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives._
|
| You're not the only one, but most of the people who believe
| like you are Americans. Outside the US the prevalent view is
| pretty much against those atomic bombings; had the US lost the
| war, the people who ordered those bombings would have been
| found guilty of war crimes and hanged.
|
| My own subjective opinion is that the US needs this narrative
| of "but we ended up saving lives", because anything else would
| run contrary to their own self image of "we are always the good
| guys".
|
| Consequently, alternative considerations like that the bombings
| were a show of force with the Soviet Union as the target
| audience tend to get downplayed in the US, because it's harder
| to think of oneself as the good guy when you killed hundreds of
| thousands of civilians in one country in order to put fear into
| the leadership of another, unrelated country.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I'm not from the US, and I have studied WW2 a lot, and in my
| opinion, the Nuclear bomb US was very defensible at the time
| and they did very likely save life.
|
| If you consider an alternative history where the US army
| invades main land Japan, you have been a massacre of epic
| proportions. City after city taken in battles with civilians
| in the middle and Japanese soldiers and civilians committing
| mass suicides.
|
| And yes, bombing civilians can be considered a 'war crime',
| but that just means all WW2 nations did it. And Japan and
| Germany (and Soviets) also did mass crimes against civilians
| for even less military reasons.
|
| > Consequently, alternative considerations like that the
| bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union as the
| target audience tend to get downplayed in the US, because
| it's harder to think of oneself as the good guy when you
| killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in one country in
| order to put fear into the leadership of another, unrelated
| country.
|
| Its downplayed because the historical evidence for it as a
| main reason is very small.
| the_af wrote:
| > _Its downplayed because the historical evidence for it as
| a main reason is very small._
|
| It's obvious I (and many others outside the US) disagree.
| InTheArena wrote:
| You can disagree - but the evidence is pretty
| unequivocal. There was never mention in any of the
| decision making bodies of any context that it was a
| primary motive. What we have to go on was Stalin's
| paranoia.
|
| It was very well documented that the entire push of the
| United States government was to involve Russia in the
| pacific theater. Major concessions had been given to get
| the Stalinist government to do so. While there certainly
| were hawks that viewed this as opportune to keep the
| communists in bay, the documentary evidence drives to the
| opposite conclusion.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Then please show the historical evidence for that. You
| can't just disagree based on your opinion.
|
| The US government has opened up a lot of documentation,
| we have a deeper insight into that process then most
| things in history. And pretty much all historians who
| look at it come to the same conclusion.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > You can't just disagree based on your opinion.
|
| There is no rule that says that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There is. Let's call it the rule of being interesting to
| other people. Your mother cares how you feel because you
| feel it, but other people care how you feel because you
| argued it well.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| You're right. You can hold whatever opinion you want,
| with whatever evidence or lack thereof you'd like. It is
| a free country.
|
| You'll have a hard time convincing most people that way,
| thankfully, though I'm sure it does work for convincing
| some.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > If you consider an alternative history where the US army
| invades main land Japan, you have been a massacre of epic
| proportions.
|
| Ground invasion vs. atomic bombings is a false dichotomy.
|
| Quoting the US strategic bombing survey: "Based on a
| detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by
| the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved,
| it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31
| December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November
| 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs
| had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the
| war, and even if no invasion had been planned or
| contemplated."
| larkost wrote:
| But that is taking a hindsight view on things. The U.S.
| planners had no real access to the thoughts of these
| people, and from their perspective, one gained by the
| island-by-island battles like Saipan, both the Japanese
| military and civilian populations seemed to be determined
| to fight (or commit suicide) to the last man, woman, and
| child. There was no sign to the outside world that
| without something drastic changing that surrender was
| something they were approaching.
|
| I do agree that after the firebombing talked about here
| that I don't see a huge change caused by atomic weapons
| (more efficient ways of dealing mass death than what we
| were already doing with more effort), but it seems that
| both sides felt that it did change things. So without
| having insight that we are not sure of even with the
| benefit of hindsight, I am not sure I can fault those in
| charge for thinking this might save lives (Japanese as
| well as American).
|
| Note: I don't give credit for that sort of thinking to
| Curtis LeMay; he was just in it to kill the enemy faster
| (i.e.: a psychopath).
| myrmidon wrote:
| I'm not criticizing the choice to drop the nukes, I'm
| disputing the opinion that the nukes were
| necessary/helpful to "save lives" (WITH the benefit of
| hindsight).
|
| I can see how that belief is _appealing_ , but from what
| I know the facts do not really support it and the truth
| is more inconvenient.
| drran wrote:
| Can you lay out your opinion and arguments?
|
| <<Nuclear bombing was used not to end the war and save
| lives, but for ... because ...>>
| myrmidon wrote:
| Nuclear bombing was not necessary to win the war, nor to
| effect a surrender of Japan by the end of 1945 (
| _without_ a costly ground invasion).
|
| Of course this is clearer in retrospect.
| bootlooped wrote:
| But what was clear to US command at the time was that the
| Imperial Japanese war machine had been thoroughly crushed
| by August 1945. They had been on a non-stop losing streak
| since Midway. What was the remaining risk to the US? What
| was the chance there was going to be another Pearl Harbor
| like event at that point? About as close to zero as
| possible. That's one of the main things that makes it
| feel hard to justify further mass killing of civilians.
|
| What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that have
| been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every
| civilian population center one after another?
| mrighele wrote:
| > What if Japan has just never surrendered?
|
| I think in some way Afghanistan is an example of what
| could have happened if Japan never surrendered: years of
| insurgency, loss of life on both sides, and maybe after
| twenty years the USA, having had enough, would have left
| the country.
|
| I think that in the end it worked better for Japanese
| than Afghans, although some the latter can boast to have
| beaten the American.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Afghanistan is low level conflict for a while. Japan was
| a modern army hell bent on taking attrition on the
| invaders.
|
| In Japan its very unlikely to work out anything like
| Afghanistan. Once the Japan government was defeated, its
| unlikely you would have seen a popular insurgency in
| Japan.
|
| And in Japan an island dominated by allied navies such
| efforts cold not be sustained anyway.
| mcguire wrote:
| That actually was a serious concern, both to the US and
| to the Japanese government itself. If the Emperor and the
| military leaders had been killed, there was no one who
| could legitimately order the remaining military to
| surrender. And the Japanese Army was not small at the end
| of the war
| (https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-
| are-no-...). In addition to the military in Japan
| (900,000 on Kyushu to oppose US landings), there were
| something like 1,500,000 in China, Burma, and Southeast
| Asia.
|
| The result could have been "warlord" led militaries
| seeking to establish their own territories and fighting
| with others. Not unlike Afghanistan or China in the 1920s
| and 1930s, or some other failed states around the world.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > What was the remaining risk to the US?
|
| Japan never posed serious risk to the US in the first
| place.
|
| > That's one of the main things that makes it feel hard
| to justify further mass killing of civilians.
|
| Japan had occupied much of East Asia including large
| parts of China and was conducting absolutely brutal
| campaigns of repression.
|
| > What if Japan has just never surrendered? Would that
| have been justification to drop an atomic bomb on every
| civilian population center one after another?
|
| The justification is that as soon as you stop containing
| them in their island. They would instantly start to go on
| the offensive again.
|
| Long term containment was considered by the US Navy as an
| alternative, but it would hardly be less brutal then
| nukes.
|
| What would you have the US do, simply say, well I guess
| you learn your lessen and go home. Leave Japan to
| reconquer East Asia again after a few years?
|
| The nukes were worthwhile to try because they had the
| capability of totally shifting the political conversation
| inside of Japan, and they did.
|
| Each attack and action had to be individually considered
| one after another. If nukes would not have shifted to
| strategic calculation, potentially another policy would
| have been attempted.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _With these totals I calculated (lines 412 and 413) the
| overall and annual democide rate (for the occupied
| population, at its greatest extent). As can be seen,
| nearly one out of every one-hundred people controlled by
| Japan was murdered, or almost three per thousand people
| per year._ "
| (https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM)
|
| At the end of the war, Japan had over 1,000,000 soldiers
| in China alone.
| worik wrote:
| I looked Curtis Le May up.
|
| The wiki quotes him as saying: "I suppose if I had lost
| the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal."(http
| s://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61..
| ..)
|
| Did not stop him doing it to North Korea and he was
| unable to get WWIII off the ground, thank goodness.
|
| Some redemption for his role in the Berlin airlift.
| Particularly for passing the job over to one better
| qualified.
|
| A complex character - I wanted to find a psychopath, but
| simply a mass murderer.
| s5300 wrote:
| I wish I could link a great source, but I believe there
| was some credible talk of a sect of the Japanese military
| leaders wanting to overthrow the Emperor & keep fighting
| what would have been a _very_ gruesome meatgrinder defeat
| /suicide pact
| InTheArena wrote:
| Yep - Wikipedia has a good summary of the attitude: While
| Japan no longer had a realistic prospect of winning the
| war, Japan's leaders believed they could make the cost of
| invading and occupying the Home Islands too high for the
| Allies to accept, which would lead to some sort of
| armistice rather than total defeat. The Japanese plan for
| defeating the invasion was called Operation Ketsugo (Jue
| Hao Zuo Zhan , ketsugo sakusen) ("Operation Codename
| Decisive"). The Japanese planned to commit the entire
| population of Japan to resisting the invasion, and from
| June 1945 onward, a propaganda campaign calling for "The
| Glorious Death of One Hundred Million" commenced.[48] The
| main message of "The Glorious Death of One Hundred
| Million" campaign was that it was "glorious to die for
| the holy emperor of Japan, and every Japanese man, woman,
| and child should die for the Emperor when the Allies
| arrived".[48] While this was not realistic, both American
| and Japanese officers at the time predicted a Japanese
| death toll in the millions.[48] From the Battle of Saipan
| onward, Japanese propaganda intensified the glory of
| patriotic death and depicted the Americans as merciless
| "white devils".[49] During the Battle of Okinawa,
| Japanese officers had ordered civilians unable to fight
| to commit suicide rather than fall into American hands,
| and all available evidence suggests the same orders would
| have been given in the home islands.[50] The Japanese
| were secretly constructing an underground headquarters in
| Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, to shelter the Emperor and
| the Imperial General Staff during an invasion. In
| planning for Operation Ketsugo, IGHQ overestimated the
| strength of the invading forces: while the Allied
| invasion plan called for fewer than 70 divisions, the
| Japanese expected up to 90.[51]
|
| It took Hirohito to block this form happening, and even
| then, one of the junta groups in the army tried to force
| a coup.
| [deleted]
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Well I mean, there basically was a coup attempt even
| after 2 nukes to try and stop the emperor from announcing
| the surrender.
| mcguire wrote:
| This matches the collection of ULTRA-decoded Japanese
| diplomatic traffic and notes from those close to the
| Japanese Supreme Council that I can't find online at the
| moment. [Notes mine.]
|
| https://www.history.navy.mil/about-
| us/leadership/director/di...
|
| " _[August 9] The news of the Soviet offensive sent the
| Supreme Council into urgent session, with Prime Minster
| Suzuki and Minster of Foreign Affairs Togo coming out in
| favor of opening a negotiating channel to the United
| States via Switzerland and Sweden, along with Navy
| Minister Yonai. Togo's proposal to accept the Potsdam
| Declaration with the condition that the emperor's
| position be preserved (something the declaration did not
| specifically address). The hardliners countered with a
| proposal that added additional conditions (which the
| Allies would certainly reject). [IIRC, these conditions
| were 1. No occupation of Japan, 2. The Japanese would
| handle the demobilization of their armies, and 3. The
| Japanese would perform their own war crimes
| investigations and trials.] As the discussion was going
| on, General Amani and General Umezu were secretly taking
| steps to implement martial law to prevent any such
| negotiations from happening at all. [I do not believe
| this was the same conspiracy as the attempted military
| coup several days later to prevent the emperor from
| broadcasting his surrender speech.] At 1030, Suzuki
| reported to the council that the emperor was in favor of
| ending the war quickly. Nevertheless, the council was
| still deadlocked 3-3 at 1100 when word of the Nagasaki
| bomb was received, and remained so even afterward._
|
| " _With the Supreme Council still deadlocked, the full
| cabinet met at 1430 on 9 August, again arriving at a 3-3
| vote. Arguments raged in a series of meetings late into
| the night. Finally, Suzuki requested an impromptu
| imperial conference with the Supreme Council and the
| emperor, which commenced at midnight and continued until
| 0200. Finally, Suzuki informed the emperor that consensus
| was impossible and requested that Hirohito break the
| stalemate. The emperor sided with Togo's proposal to make
| an offer to accept the Potsdam Declaration with the
| condition that the emperor's position be preserved.
| Suzuki then implored the Supreme Council to accept the
| emperor's will._
|
| " _On 10 August, the Japanese government sent a telegram
| via the Swiss, which was immediately intercepted by U.S.
| intelligence. As U.S. leaders evaluated the Japanese
| proposal, President Truman ordered a halt to the bombing
| of Japan and that the next use of an atomic bomb would
| require explicit presidential authorization (the second
| one didn't). ..._
|
| " _On 12 August, the United States responded to the
| Japanese offer, stating that "The ultimate form of
| government of Japan, in accordance with the Potsdam
| Declaration, to be established by the freely expressed
| will of the Japanese people." The Japanese found the
| response to be ambiguous, which it was, provoking more
| heated discussion in the Supreme Council whether to hold
| out for an "explicit guarantee" of the emperor's
| position. ..._
|
| " _On 13 August, U.S. B-29s dropped leaflets all over
| Japan, making public the Japanese proposal and the U.S.
| counterproposal. A strong case can be made that it was
| actually the psychological impact of this huge leaflet
| drop that tipped the balance (making it one of the most
| effective psyops campaigns in history), although by this
| time the full magnitude of the collapse of Japanese
| defenses in Manchuria and Sakhalin Islands was also known
| to the Supreme Council, which finally agreed that the
| language in the U.S. counterproposal was good enough.
| [There were more bombings of Japan at this time, as the
| Japanese surrender message to the Allies was sent encoded
| and there was an increase in military radio traffic.]_
|
| " _At 2300 on 14 August (Tokyo time) the emperor made a
| gramophone recording reading his statement to the
| Japanese people of his decision to surrender (without
| ever actually using that word), which was to be broadcast
| to the Japanese people over the radio at noon on 15
| August._ "
|
| The Japanese government at the time gave most of the
| power to the military (2/3 to 1/3 in the Supreme Council
| (and more given the pre-war tradition of assassination))
| and that council was deadlocked up until Prime Minister
| Suzuki requested the Emperor to break the deadlock---the
| only time he cast a vote in the council, as far as I
| know.
|
| Ground invasion (either by the US or more likely by both
| the US and USSR, leading to a split North and South Japan
| akin to Eastern and Western Europe) vs. atomic bombings
| is indeed a false dichotomy; the third option (favored by
| the US Navy) was to simply continue the blockade of
| Japan, leading to mass starvation. Oh, and this whole
| situation is made more touchy by the fact that the
| Japanese Army had 1,500,000 (?) men in armies on the
| Asian mainland. One concern was that if the Japanese
| government did collapse, there would be no one in a
| position to tell the military in Japan and in Asia to
| stop fighting.
|
| Here's the deal about the USSBS: it's _massive._ The US
| let a big stack of social scientists and operations
| researchers loose and took everything they produced as
| part of it. And then wrote conclusions that accept parts
| of it and contradict others. If you want a conclusion,
| you can find it in there somewhere.
|
| I do not know of any serious historians who accept the
| idea that Japan would have surrendered before the end of
| 1945 without any outside push. Certainly, they didn't
| seem to be in any particular rush even with the pushes.
|
| Oh, and about just not using the atomic bombs? Truman
| addressed this later: what _are_ you going to tell the
| parents of the soldiers who are killed after Aug 10? This
| particular war has been going on since 1937 (if not
| 1931); tens of millions of people have been killed. And
| you chose not to use a weapon that could have ended it?
| drran wrote:
| Can you give us insight, please: When RF plan to
| surrender?
| myrmidon wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're asking for.
|
| Note that I'm not criticizing the _choice_ to drop the
| nukes, I 'm arguing against the belief (that many people
| still hold now, with the benefit of hindsight) that it
| was necessary and saved lifes.
| drran wrote:
| You said that it was possible to predict when Japan will
| surrender. Can you do that trick again, please?
| mannykannot wrote:
| > Ground invasion vs. atomic bombings is a false
| dichotomy.
|
| I think you are right for a reason other than the one you
| are giving here. At the time, there were considerable and
| growing doubts that invasion was at all feasible at any
| cost.
|
| The bombing survey was only, and could only have been,
| conducted after the surrender and during the subsequent
| occupation. The information available at the time, such
| as the all-out defense of Okinawa and Japan's
| preparations for doing the same throughout the main
| islands, was making invasion untenable. Earlier
| assumptions about the ability of the allies to bring to
| bear superior force no longer seemed realistic. [1]
|
| What about a negotiations? Japan was showing no interest
| in negotiations, and intercepted diplomatic
| communications confirmed this. Equally importantly, the
| allies were opposed to anything less than unconditional
| surrender because the armistice of 1918 had set the stage
| for WWII. In addition, there were considerable and
| realistic doubts that the Japanese military, still
| occupying a wide swath of Asia, would accept the outcome
| of such negotiations.
|
| There was a fourth option - a naval blockade, promoted by
| Admiral King - and that was apparently expected to kill
| far more Japanese than either an invasion (insofar as it
| was feasible at all) or a nuclear attack with the two
| bombs then available.
|
| As for a demonstration of nuclear weapons: with only two
| available, if their use failed to bring about a
| surrender, it would be back to square one for several
| months. It was not beyond every ethical principle to
| think that, if these bombs were used, it should be done
| in a way that maximized their likelihood of ending the
| war. As it happens, even the bombing of Hiroshima did not
| seem to bring about meaningful change in the Japanese
| leadership's position.
|
| As we are discussing the ethics of the decision, we
| should put aside ex post facto judgement such as that
| from the bombing survey, but also ask whether the cost in
| Japanese lives was given much consideration in
| Washington. I have not seen anything definitive either
| way, and I am sure Japanese lives did not count as equal
| to allied ones, but it seems clear that, out of what
| seemed to be the feasible alternatives available, the use
| of nuclear bombs did not stand out in terms of civilian
| casualties and human suffering.
|
| [1] Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial
| Japanese Empire.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This is simply an opinion. How actual believes on the
| matter by leading war council member on this question
| would have evolved is highly questionable.
|
| And we have basically no historical example where
| traditional bombing leads to that outcome.
| rjsw wrote:
| I think you could have got a comparable death toll just in
| Japanese POW camps if negociations for the surrender had
| dragged on a couple of months more, wouldn't need an
| invasion.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| can someone explain why the alternative to atomic bombs was
| invading the islands and thus millions of deaths? how about
| just embargoing them and waiting for them to surrender?
| reddog wrote:
| That's an interesting thought. I've read a lot about the
| pacific war but nothing about a possible blockade/embargo
| scenario being considered. Maybe that's because there
| were still about 4 million Japanese soldiers still in the
| field in China, SE Asia and the East Indies
|
| I do know that Japanese agriculture had completely
| collapsed by 1945 and millions would have starved to
| death had the war been extended. An extended blockade
| would likely have been worse than the bombing.
| panick21_ wrote:
| This was actually considered by the Navy. It was the
| leading plan advocated by the Navy as an alternative to
| invasion.
|
| The problem is that Japan is not self sufficient in food
| or much of anything else required for a modern economy.
|
| The policy you advocate would have essentially turned
| back the clock and made Japan into a feudal kingdom with
| 1/10 the population. It would have been a mass starvation
| way beyond any blockade of Germany or other modern
| starvation's.
|
| At the same time, massive amounts of Allied (mostly
| Chinese) POW would be die. The Japanese army in China and
| Korea would likely have continued and intensified their
| war on the local population. Revenge on local population
| for supposed help of the allies was something Japan did
| all the time.
|
| At the same time it would have required the stationing of
| a gigantic navy and air force all over East Asia for
| potentially decades. Japan soldiers were still all over
| East Asia and had to be contained everywhere.
|
| They would have started leaving their bases and
| attempting to extract food from local populations.
| Japanese bases all over East Asia would turn into quasi
| independent military dictatorships trying to insure their
| own survival.
|
| There were still active soldiers in 1974 who didn't know
| Japan had fallen. The had to fly the commanding officer
| who had been 20 years retired in an old uniform to the
| island to get the guy to stop fighting. Now imagine that
| sort of thing the whole Japanese army in East Asia.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| The alternate history is the Soviets do a ground invasion
| from the unfortified north. They had broken off their pact
| with Japan months early and invaded Manchuria just days
| after the first atomic bomb was dropped, ultimately gaining
| (and keeping after the Japanese surrender) control of the
| northern part of the Korean peninsula. Hirohito would have
| been captured by the Soviets and suffered a fate similar to
| Puyi's, while Japan itself would have been split up like
| Germany. This would have been anathema to the Japanese,
| which is one reason they were scrambling to find a channel
| to offer unconditional surrender to the US as soon as the
| Soviets invaded, after having more or less ignored the
| Hiroshima bombing, their previous channel via Stalin having
| been cut off.
|
| The US was aware that the Soviets would not renew the
| nonaggression pact, having negotiated it with Stalin in
| Yalta in February 1945, and with the Soviet Union
| denouncing the pact in April. It's possible that the bombs
| allowed the US to mostly ignore Soviet interests in setting
| the terms of the surrender, which would have a positive
| effect, but otherwise, I'm not as sure as most Americans
| that the atomic bombings were necessary.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The Soviet had literally zero capability of invading
| Japan. The only way the could have would be on US and
| British ships.
| trhway wrote:
| Atomic bombs insured that USSR doesn't cross the 38th.
| That was the most important goal of the bombings.
|
| Japan was already done either way. USSR squashed the 1M+
| strong Quandong army in a matter of days Several days
| more or less - that didn't matter. The bombings weren't
| the last shot of WWII. They were the first shot of the
| Cold War establishing its battle lines in that region.
| gpm wrote:
| > Outside the US the prevalent view is pretty much against
| those atomic bombings
|
| Outside of the US is a big place, do you have some source to
| argue that this is prevalent view as a whole, and not just
| the prevalent view in whichever corner of the earth you
| happen to be in?
| golergka wrote:
| > Consequently, alternative considerations like that the
| bombings were a show of force with the Soviet Union
|
| But how is that an alternative? Showing force to Soviet Union
| would ALSO save millions of lives.
| the_af wrote:
| What do you mean? Regarding the coming Cold War, then MAD,
| etc?
|
| I find that kind of reasoning troubling. It can be used to
| justify pretty awful things. This is a completely made up
| example for the sake of argument, a reduction to the
| absurd, but suppose they decide that vaporizing Africa,
| Asia and parts of Europe is better for world peace long-
| term... should they do it? "Sure, billions will die, but
| trust us that long term more lives will be saved in the
| coming centuries". Ok, so do we push the red button then?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > had the US lost the war, the people who ordered those
| bombings would have been found guilty of war crimes and
| hanged.
|
| Just gonna leave this here (from the wiki page)
|
| > Many of the Allied airmen who were captured after being
| shot down over Japan were mistreated. On 8 September 1944,
| the Cabinet of Japan directed that indiscriminate bombing
| constituted a war crime despite the fact there was no
| international treaty or instrument protecting a civilian
| population specifically from attack by aircraft at the time.
| As a result, captured Allied airmen were subject to trial and
| possible execution.
|
| Don't wish to discuss whether it was morally right or wrong.
| Just pointing out it's difficult to call something a "crime"
| if there was limited legal basis for it (no international
| treaty) at the time.
|
| Let's not judge the people of yesteryear by today's moral
| standards. I sure as shit don't want to be judged on some of
| the stuff I've done based on standards in 70 years time.
|
| Edit: Also, war is hell.
| soperj wrote:
| >despite the fact there was no international treaty or
| instrument protecting a civilian population specifically
| from attack by aircraft at the time
|
| There was the Hague Conventions from 1899/1907,
| specifically IV, that does exactly that.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| This was literally copy-pasta from wikipedia. Feel free
| to edit the wikipedia entry if you think it's wrong.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > Just pointing out it's difficult to call something a
| "crime" if there was limited legal basis for it (no
| international treaty) at the time.
|
| You are unaware of the Nuremberg trials, it seems?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| I'm just repeating what is on the wiki page and saying
| that 70 years ago != today.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials#Ex_post_
| fac...
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| I said it's _difficult_ to call something a crime when
| there is limited existing legal basis. Not that it _wasn
| 't_ a crime. Nor that it _was_ a crime.
|
| Also, definitely IANAL.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Since you said:
|
| > Just pointing out it's difficult to call something a
| "crime" if there was limited legal basis for it (no
| international treaty) at the time.
|
| I can't help but wonder if you'd find it equally
| difficult if someone calls certain actions of the Nazis a
| crime -- assuming there was limited legal basis for it
| (no international treaty) at the time, etc.
|
| Or is it only difficult when we're talking about American
| crimes?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Or is it only difficult when we're talking about crimes
| [that have not been prosecuted in a court of law, only
| the court of HN comments]?
|
| More accurate.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Actually, a high ranking Germany naval officer was tried
| for ordering unrestricted submarine warfare during the
| Nuremberg trials and was successfully able to defend
| against this charge by pointing out that the Allies
| engaged in the same strategy [1]. The Allies did
| recognize the hypocrisy of punishing defeated enemies of
| the same actions they took.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Order_No._154#Nuremb
| erg_tr...
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _You 're not the only one, but most of the people who
| believe like you are Americans. Outside the US the prevalent
| view is pretty much against those atomic bombings; had the US
| lost the war, the people who ordered those bombings would
| have been found guilty of war crimes and hanged._
|
| It's a good thing that the US did not lose the war, as
| otherwise the large part of the planet would be living under
| a xenophobic/racist, totalitarian regime that viewed
| foreigners of little value and did experimentation on human
| subjects:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731
|
| The Japanese War Council were not planning on surrendering
| after the _first_ atomic bomb:
|
| > _The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent
| atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood
| enough to know how very difficult building it would be.
| Therefore, many Japanese and in particular the military
| members of the government refused to believe the United
| States had built an atomic bomb, and the Japanese military
| ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of
| Hiroshima 's destruction.[84] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief
| of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United
| States had made one, they could not have many more.[85]
| American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like
| Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the
| first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large
| supply.[61][86]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Hiroshima,
| _...
|
| Even after the _second_ bomb there was still some
| disagreement:
|
| > _In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news
| arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyushu, had been
| hit by a second atomic bomb (called "Fat Man" by the United
| States). By the time the meeting ended, the Big Six had split
| 3-3. Suzuki, Togo, and Admiral Yonai favored Togo's one
| additional condition to Potsdam, while General Anami, General
| Umezu, and Admiral Toyoda insisted on three further terms
| that modified Potsdam: that Japan handle their own
| disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals,
| and that there be no occupation of Japan.[96]_
|
| * Ibid
|
| And even after the Emperor ordered the cessation of
| hostilities (note: he never used the word "surrender" in his
| address) there were _still_ elements in Japan who wanted to
| fight:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyujo_incident
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's a good thing that the US did not lose the war, as
| otherwise the large part of the planet would be living
| under a xenophobic/racist, totalitarian regime that viewed
| foreigners of little value and did experimentation on human
| subjects_
|
| It seems you're under the impression I was arguing the
| Japanese weren't war criminals with many of their WW2
| actions or that I believe they ought to have won the war,
| or at least that I believe the US ought to have lost WW2,
| or some variation of that.
|
| But if you read carefully what I wrote, I'm saying nothing
| of the sort, am I? I'm arguing about the atomic bombings
| and American beliefs about their justification.
|
| So spare me the description of Japanese war crimes: I'm
| aware of them and I wouldn't want to live in a world where
| Imperial Japan had won WW2.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Speaking as a historian, The atomic bombs being horrible
| weapons that at the time where strategically justified is the
| consensus view among non-populist historians.
|
| There is a secondary view that it was done to an eye of using
| the bomb as a threat to Stalin, but all research of the
| decision makers does not reveal this to be the case. In fact,
| the research shows over and over that the Americans where
| desperate to get the Russians into the pacific theater. The
| view that the use of the atomic bomb was a effort to threaten
| Stalin and keep the Russians from the war was popularized by
| Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's book in 2005, but that book has been
| pretty much discredited in historical communities.
|
| A example analysis is here:
| https://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html
|
| It's also not that the United States opinion diverges from
| much of the world. Outside of Japan, most countries have a
| similar percentage of people who view that it was justified
| or not. (79% of Japanese thing it was unjustified versus 44%
| of Americans).
| the_af wrote:
| You'd have to do more than "speak as a historian" to
| convince me. You'd have to convince me (with references of
| supporting and opposing works) that this is the mainstream
| view for historians outside the US.
|
| "Non-populist" historians is a weasel word that will let
| you discard any historian's opinion that doesn't fit your
| thesis. I propose we simply divide between "American" and
| "not American", which is more objective.
|
| > _It 's also not that the United States opinion diverges
| from much of the world._
|
| That's wrong, most of the world disagrees with the
| "terrible necessity" narrative which is so popular in the
| US. Of course Japan disagrees with it, being on the
| receiving end (and having their own blind spots to their
| crimes), but the rest of the world disagrees as well.
|
| It's normal, the US is fixated on a single narrative that
| lets them cling to the belief they are always the good
| guys. Any other country would do the same, agreed --
| everyone is the hero of their own story. But only one
| country dropped two atomic bombs on civilian populations.
| ksdale wrote:
| So you're trying to argue that the U.S. is actually the
| bad guys? Perhaps the good guy/bad guy dichotomy simply
| isn't that useful. The U.S. did terrible things during
| the war, and there is no excuse for that. The U.S. is
| also only directly responsible for a very small fraction
| of the total civilian deaths in the war, and for none of
| the genocidal deaths. The world today is a better place
| for the Allies having won the war, and the U.S. effort is
| a major reason that happened. It's silly for Americans to
| cling to the narrative that we're always making good
| choices, that's obviously untrue, but I think it's
| equally silly to argue that the totality of what the U.S.
| did during World War 2 was worse than anything any other
| country did, especially worse enough to make the U.S. the
| bad guys. But I don't think you need to call them the bad
| guys to acknowledge that they committed atrocities.
| trasz wrote:
| I generally agree, but: how is mass killing civilians,
| like in this case, "non-genocidal"?
| ksdale wrote:
| Good question! Genocide is not just another word for
| mass-murder. It is defined as killing with the intention
| to destroy the targeted ethnic group/culture/religion
| completely. That certainly wasn't the American plan
| anywhere during WW2. Germany's actions were obviously
| genocidal, and Japan's actions in China arguably were as
| well.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>and Japan's actions in China arguably were as well.
|
| Arguably? not sure there is anything 'arguably' about
| Japan's intentions and actions in China.
| stickfigure wrote:
| You repeat this same line many times in this thread,
| every time without evidence.
|
| Nobody has to convince you of anything. But if you want
| to be taken seriously in this forum, you have to convince
| us. You don't appear to be trying.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| >You'd have to convince me (with references of supporting
| and opposing works) that this is the mainstream view for
| historians outside the US.
|
| >most of the world disagrees with the "terrible
| necessity" narrative
|
| Thank you for speaking for me and most of the world. I
| assume you have "references of supporting and opposing
| works"?
| jleyank wrote:
| Those bombing Japan were already war criminals for the
| firebombing long before the Atomic bombs appeared on the
| scene. They were merely more efficient to deliver. But then,
| so were the British and German bombing efforts.
| refurb wrote:
| I'm outside the US and nah, the bombings are viewed as quite
| justified.
|
| Japan track record during the war is on par with Nazi Germany
| when it comes to genocide, mass killings of civilians, war of
| aggression, etc.
|
| And it took _two_ atomic bombs and even then Japan took time
| to capitulate.
|
| The US could have just blockaded Japan and starved them out
| but is hundreds of thousands of civilian dead from starvation
| any better?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _You 're not the only one, but most of the people who
| believe like you are Americans._"
|
| Conveniently forgetting about the enormous population of
| China and the rest of Asia subject to the depredations of the
| Imperial Japanese Army, who also overwhelmingly approve of
| the atomic bombings. I have relatives who lived during the
| war or its aftermath and, needless to say, they do not share
| your concerns in the slightest.
|
| IMO, it's more accurate to say that the handwringing over the
| bombings is a small minority of Westerners advocating fringe
| theories that try to paint Japan as a victim rather than an
| aggressor.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This story comes to mind. >BTS T-shirt: Japanese TV show
| cancels BTS appearance over atomic bomb shirt
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46147777
|
| In the US educational system you'll learn much more about
| the atomic bomb than Nanking or anything Japan did. I
| suspect this is due to China being a Cold War adversary.
| Chinese intervention in the Korean War makes much more
| sense when you consider China's security concerns.
|
| No one wants hostile foreign troops on their border. I see
| parallels in Ukraine. Russia really doesn't want NATO to
| encircled them. We would have problems with Russian troops
| stationed in Toronto.
|
| This is still recent history.
|
| I recall a Filipino man telling me his grandfather forbid
| him from marrying a Japanese woman.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_famine_of_1945
|
| It can be argued that had the war lasted any longer
| millions would of starved. In fact even if we just
| blockaded Japan, mass starvation would of killed millions.
|
| The post war Marshall Plan is above and beyond one of the
| greatest things we've done as a country.
| drran wrote:
| > No one wants hostile foreign troops on their border. I
| see parallels in Ukraine. Russia really doesn't want NATO
| to encircled them. We would have problems with Russian
| troops stationed in Toronto.
|
| Ukraine don't want members of Russian Federation and it
| allies to encircle Ukraine, so we are going to liberate
| Belarus and take Kuban back. The only important thing for
| us is what WE want, isn't?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 - U.S. Secretary of
| State James Baker's famous "not one inch eastward"
| assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet
| leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of
| a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by
| Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials
| throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and
| on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet,
| German, British and French documents posted today by the
| National Security Archive at George Washington University
|
| https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-
| programs/2017...
| drran wrote:
| > U.S. Secretary of State James Baker'
|
| > NATO
|
| US [?] NATO
|
| RF [?] USSR
|
| Gorbachev [?] Pukin
| golergka wrote:
| That assurance is a fake peddled by Russian propaganda,
| which goes completely against NATO's open door policy.
| Around 2000-2003 Russia was in talks about joining NATO
| ourselves; clearly, no regard to that "assurance" was
| given.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm open to being wrong, can you point me to a source
| saying it's propaganda.
| pasabagi wrote:
| I always got the feeling that asians of that generation (at
| least at the leadership level) understood that the Japanese
| were just playing by the rules of the game established by
| the europeans. That's why both sides of the chinese civil
| war, for instance, were willing to work with the japanese -
| and why after the communists won, they were happy to work
| with the japanese to rebuild the economy. It's the same in
| South Korea - the post-war leadership's relationship to
| Japan is somewhat complex - consider Syngman Rhee, who was
| part of the Gapsin coup, or to a more extreme level, Park
| Chung-hee, or Chiang Kai-shek, both of whom had formative
| years in Japanese institutions, and were soldiers in the
| japanese army.
| the_af wrote:
| No, you're conflating different things.
|
| I'm sure Japan, through their crimes, earned the hatred of
| many countries in Asia which welcomed the atomic bombings
| as retribution.
|
| But the narrative I'm mostly arguing against is not that
| many welcomed the bombings, but the specific American
| narrative that there was no other way and that they "saved
| Japanese lives".
|
| If you want to argue the Japanese (civilians and all)
| deserved it, that's a separate conversation.
| drran wrote:
| Aggressor want to occupy as much land and resources as
| possible and kill as much opposition as possible.
|
| Defender want to save people lives and protect status
| quo.
|
| > But the narrative I'm mostly arguing against is not
| that many welcomed the bombings, but the specific
| American narrative that there was no other way and that
| they "saved Japanese lives".
|
| Yep.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Please tell us what other strategy you advocate.
|
| They basically were 2 alternative.
|
| US Army wanted an invasion of main land Japan.
|
| US Navy wanted a longer term blockade that would
| literally lead to mass starvation and basically transform
| Japan back the Shogunate period in terms of population.
|
| A good argument can be made that both of these would have
| lead to far more deaths.
| tdeck wrote:
| The US had already formed an agreement with Stalin that
| the USSR would invade Manchuria (despite it's non-
| aggressin pact with Japan). This plan involved the USSR
| gaining control of territory they formerly lost to Japan
| during the Russo-Japanese war. That was the original US
| plan to end the war, not a ground invasion. When Truman
| saw the trinity test he decided that he could win the war
| using nukes without letting the soviets gain anything.
| Hence the scramble to drop them.
|
| Or they could have offered Japan a conditional surrender
| rather than insisting on an "unconditional" one and then
| letting them keep their emporer anyway. Japan was already
| looking desperately for ways to surrender.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This is incorrect on a number of fronts: 1) The Japanese
| surrender was unconditional. The emperor's positions as
| very much at Douglas Macarthurs will. (And this was made
| clear before the surrender). 2) There was no move to cut
| the soviets out. Stalin immediately became paranoid (as
| he often did) and moved up his time frame once it became
| clear (before Trinity) that the USA would have the bomb
| soon. 3) Truman never decided any such thing - in fact,
| he announced ("with glee" according to the reporters
| present) that Stalin had entered the war. This narrative
| comes from Hasegawa's book, and it's completely
| incorrect.
| the_af wrote:
| I don't know that those were the only two alternatives.
|
| > _Please tell us what other strategy you advocate._
|
| "Tell us": who is "us"? In any case, I'm thankfully not
| in the situation to decide, nor am I an armchair general,
| so I'll have to excuse myself from invading or bombing
| Japan.
|
| To state my position once again: the narrative popular in
| the US, that the atomic bombings were justified as a
| terrible necessity and that they actually saved lives
| ("Japanese lives", like someone else stated) is only
| popular in the US, and it exists mostly to enable them to
| retain their sense of being the good guys. Other
| countries, unburdened by the necessity of always making
| the US look like the good guys, don't favor this
| particular narrative.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > who is "us"?
|
| People in the comment section of this forum where we are
| having an argument about this situation.
|
| > In any case, I'm thankfully not in the situation to
| decide, nor am I an armchair general, so I'll have to
| excuse myself from invading or bombing Japan.
|
| Seems like the simple way out.
|
| > is only popular in the US
|
| Its actually popular with everybody who has studied WW2
| in detail. I'm European and I watch content by other
| Europeans who agree with the argument.
|
| In terms of popular opinion, I don't think most nations
| think about it much at all.
|
| > it exists mostly to enable them to retain their sense
| of being the good guys
|
| I disagree. You can be the good guy without arguing that
| it was the better option for Japan.
|
| > Other countries, unburdened by the necessity of always
| making the US look like the good guys, don't favor this
| particular narrative.
|
| Its a simple matter of military strategy. Anybody that
| has studied military history can engaged in those
| arguments. Ending a war is difficult, and threw-out
| history we see different how they can end.
|
| Looking at the strategic options at the time and doing
| the best you can at evaluating the potential casualties
| will lead you to the conclusion that you don't seem to
| like.
|
| If you disagree with that assessment, then you have to
| make an argument for an alternative strategy that would
| have saved more people.
|
| Argument like that could potentially be made. One might
| argue for example that going away from unconditional
| surrender, and trying to make some kind of deal where
| Japan could keep Korea or something like that could have
| been made.
|
| But again, you actually have to make that argument if you
| want to be the a moral critic.
| the_af wrote:
| "It's a simple matter", "seems like the simple way out".
|
| Well, if you have it all figured out, why engage with me
| in conversation?
|
| > _Its actually popular with everybody who has studied
| WW2 in detail_
|
| This is false, and an empty assertion. So the people who
| disagree with you haven't studied WW2 in detail? A
| variant of the "all non-populist historians agree that
| [...]".
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Well, if you have it all figured out, why engage with
| me in conversation?
|
| I don't have it figured out. What I am trying to do is
| explain your policy. I'm trying to get you to commit to
| an actual viable policy rather then doing moral
| grandstanding.
|
| > This is false, and an empty assertion. So the people
| who disagree with you haven't studied WW2 in detail? A
| variant of the "all non-populist historians agree that
| [...]".
|
| It reflects my own experience with studying the topic, in
| media, books, podcast, forums and so on.
|
| And generally the people who disagree refuse to make
| detailed historical argument or proposing alternative
| solutions and just relay on moral grandstanding.
| theworld22 wrote:
| In Australia, for undergraduate students studying
| history, this is the most commonly assigned essay topic
| in World War 2 studies.
|
| Most of the students go into it thinking like you.
|
| Nearly all of them change their mind once they look more
| deeply at the evidence.
|
| The atomic bombings are a classic case where the popular
| assumed narrative differs significantly from the facts.
|
| And that's the reason this is assigned as an essay topic.
| The idea is to sober up the students a little bit and
| help them understand that their neat worldviews (USA
| bad!) are not reflected in the messy reality.
| the_af wrote:
| Thanks for your reply. One thing I want to point out,
| because I saw someone else also ask me this:
|
| > _[...] help them understand that their neat worldviews
| (USA bad!)_
|
| I don't know about Australian students, but at least _I_
| am not saying "USA bad". I'm describing a particular
| narrative about the atomic bombings as being fueled by
| the necessity of Americans to sustain their perception of
| always being the good guys.
|
| For some reason some people read this and conclude I
| believe the US were the bad guys.
|
| I obviously believe the atomic bombings were a war crime;
| but more generally, I _do not_ believe the US were the
| bad guys in WW2. All moral grays and downright immoral
| actions committed aside, the US was on the good side of
| that war, and Japan on the bad side. I hope that clears
| up that part of my position.
| pessimizer wrote:
| You're trying to pull somebody into an argument that
| they're not interested in. The argument they were making
| is that approving of something that causes Japanese
| suffering _because_ it causes Japanese suffering is not
| the same as approving of something that causes Japanese
| suffering for its strategic value or necessity to end the
| war.
|
| You're arguing against a position that the person you're
| arguing against hasn't taken.
| dandare wrote:
| Different countries certainly have different biases, but that
| does not mean that rational analysis of the problem is not
| possible. Would Japan surrender on August 15 if the bombs
| were not dropped? Could the US drop the first bomb on the
| Tokyo Bay instead? etc.
|
| PS: I am European.
| the_af wrote:
| Those are valid questions.
|
| I think Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway, just
| some careful wording and additional pressure from the
| Soviet Union's military might would have done it.
|
| If this was truly about saving lives, like the traditional
| American narrative goes, then surely _some_ concessions
| that allowed their emperor to save face would have been
| warranted.
|
| If, on the contrary, testing the bomb on civilian
| populations and infrastructure was the priority, it stands
| to reason imposing harder conditions on surrender would be
| the course of action.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > I think Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway
|
| What's your evidence for this. From what we can tell from
| the knowledge of the people that actually matter in
| Japan, they were not that close to surrender.
|
| Even if you had gone away from Unconditional surrender
| they were not close to a majority.
|
| Even after 2 nuclear bombs, the peace party didn't have a
| majority, it required the emperor taking a direct
| political role against the war party to manage getting
| negotiations.
|
| Soviets were just mopping up in Northern Asia, they were
| no thread to a Homeland of Japan. At best Soviets was a
| hope held up by some in the War Party, that if somehow
| they would flip against the US with them.
|
| > If this was truly about saving lives, like the
| traditional American narrative goes
|
| It was about saving AMERICAN lives back then. And it did.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It was about saving AMERICAN lives back then. And it
| did._
|
| Some, in this very comments section, have argued it saved
| Japanese lives. I certainly have heard this argued
| elsewhere, too.
|
| If it was just about American lives, ok, maybe. Sounds
| better than an invasion of mainland Japan, sure. Maybe
| there were even better alternatives. An hypothetical
| weapon which could simply evaporate all of Japan with all
| the people inside would also have saved American lives,
| but it doesn't seem so good, does it? The measure of
| "saving American lives" is a tricky one, and not every
| option is justified.
| js2 wrote:
| > Truman wrote, "My object is to save as many American
| lives as possible but I also have a human feeling for the
| women and children of Japan."
|
| https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm
| panick21_ wrote:
| I agree that people in the comments make that argument.
| And I think its likely correct.
|
| But it certainty was not a justification made back then.
| I don't think anybody argued people back then were
| considering that.
|
| > Maybe there were even better alternatives.
|
| If you disagree with the strategy followed, your argument
| would be more powerful if you had an alternative strategy
| that would have been more human.
|
| I am very open to alternative strategies. I have fought
| about it a lot, but I don't really see it.
|
| > An hypothetical weapon which could simply evaporate all
| of Japan with all the people inside would also have saved
| American lives, but it doesn't seem so good, does it?
|
| Japan had 77 million people around there. If such a
| weapon existed. How many million Americans would you
| sacrifice in order not to use that weapon?
|
| Would you for example kill everybody in New York even if
| 10-20 million would die anyway?
|
| What is the calculation you would actually make if you
| were in the position. How many American 20 something
| would you sacrifice per Japanese civilian.
|
| And how do you measure Japanese victims in China, Korea
| and other places that were suffering many causalities
| with every additional day of the war.
| xeromal wrote:
| Do you think the Soviet Union would've just stopped at
| pressure or do you think they would've steamrolled
| through Japan just like they did in Germany?
| the_af wrote:
| I honestly don't know. Maybe they would have stopped,
| maybe they would have steamrolled it. It's an alternative
| to nuking Japan, though, and that's my point.
| xeromal wrote:
| Oh for sure, I just don't think it's as certain as some
| people make it out to be. It was a calculated risk just
| like dropping the bombs.
| InTheArena wrote:
| No - they would not have. In fact, the Soviet Union
| demanded a piece of the action with a "Soviet Zone" in
| Japan, just as it had with Berlin and Germany.
|
| Truman said no.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _that allowed their emperor to save face would have
| been warranted_
|
| It would have infuriated the Chinese and other Asian
| allies of the Allied powers. Granted, they might not have
| immediately been able to do anything about it but, as
| later wars and economic growth in the region showed, they
| were far from impotent and the Allies had to look toward
| the post-war future.
| the_af wrote:
| I doubt the emperor himself would have infuriated the
| Chinese, but regardless, we are no longer discussing
| saving lives, are we? So it _wasn 't_ about saving lives,
| is that what we are saying?
| InTheArena wrote:
| The narrative that Japan was about to surrender is a nice
| story, but has no factual basis. The entire Japanese
| political structure was where the Japanese political
| structure had been since 1935. A all powerful military
| junta ruled, with lip service given to a emperor. The
| emperor sent out feelers for peace, but the military
| junta (which could and would dissolve the government if
| anything they did not approve of was adopted) would not
| stand for it.
|
| There's been some effort to recast the official Japanese
| response to the Potsdam declaring (Mo Sha ) as ignoring
| instead of "be silent with contempt" - but the modern
| historical view was that Japan had used Mo Sha in the
| context that it was intended, and intended to ignore any
| further calls for surrender.
|
| In terms of unconditional surrender - the Allies had
| agreed on that standard because of the end of World War
| 1. The conditional nature of the end of that war led to
| the "stabbed in the back" myth that Hitler rode to power
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>The narrative that Japan was about to surrender is a
| nice story, but has no factual basis.
|
| I agree, if they were 'about to surrender' they would
| have surrendered after the first atomic bomb, but they
| didn't, and I believe they only surrendered after the
| second, because they assumed there would be a 3rd and 4th
| etc
|
| Look at how many people that were killed on Okinawa -
| which wasn't even the Japanese homeland - does anyone
| really believe that the Japanese wouldn't have rallied
| every man, woman and child to defend their homeland once
| Americans started a ground invasion? I believe lives were
| saved.
| throwanem wrote:
| > Could the US drop the first bomb on the Tokyo Bay
| instead?
|
| Sure, but then the discussion would be around the morality
| of demolishing the capital of Japan with a manmade tsunami,
| so I guess I'm not sure I see what that would help?
| ufmace wrote:
| > Outside the US the prevalent view is pretty much against
| those atomic bombings
|
| Sorry, what gives you (or anyone else) the right to speak for
| the "prevalent view" in the entire rest of the world outside
| of the US? In my experience, many Western Europeans love to
| decry American arrogance (okay some truth to that), but then
| go on to themselves claim the right to speak for the entire
| rest of the world. There are a great many countries in the
| world, and they all have the right to speak for themselves.
|
| Some may have had the luck to have not suffered too horribly
| for various reasons during WWII. Other have suffered horribly
| under the Axis powers, and don't decry the brutal tactics
| that were sometimes needed to win the war against a far more
| brutal enemy as soon as possible.
| drran wrote:
| So, if RF will invade Ukraine again and Ukraine will nuke a
| major city in RF in return, it will be a war crime?
| the_af wrote:
| You seem anxious to bring Russia and Ukraine into this
| conversation, which is puzzling.
|
| I'm uninterested in that, but let me give you a limited
| response in two parts:
|
| 1. I consider nuking a major city a war crime, regardless
| of who does it (the US, Russia or Ukraine).
|
| 2. If Ukraine or Russia nuke any city there will be world
| trouble of the sort that will make our little conversation
| here irrelevant. So pray it doesn't happen.
|
| Thankfully this scenario is highly unlikely.
| drran wrote:
| So, you see no difference between invading and defending.
|
| If RF will kill millions of Ukrainian with conventional
| weapons, like they did in 1932-1934, or capture and
| destroy another major city, like Grozny, it's OK for you.
| If Ukraine will do the same for RF in return, then it's
| war crime for you, because victim of conventional weapon
| [?] victim of nuclear weapon. Right?
|
| > Thankfully this scenario is highly unlikely.
|
| Two nuclear nations are at war since 2014. Where you
| live?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Let me be blunt: what you believe isn't relevant. It happened
| the way it did and what the other leg of that choice contains
| is something that nobody knows and therefore debating it is
| pointless.
|
| What we do know is that a great crime was committed, the
| balance of which is also irrelevant, because whether one, ten,
| ten thousand or 100,000 or even millions of Japanese lives
| would been saved we do not know. But we do know how many were
| lost.
| spenvo wrote:
| IMO, the Japanese surrender had just as much to do with the
| USSR opening a new front against the country (less than a month
| before) with its massive invasion of Manchuria, and its
| capitulation was similar in a way to German forces moving west
| to surrender to the US instead of the USSR.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It wasn't just Japanese lives that were at stake. An invasion
| of Japan was estimated to cost 1 million US military lives.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I agree with the theory that
| Japan's capitulation was only because the Soviets did not renew
| their non aggression pact.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| And I'm not the only one that thinks you could have achieved
| the same results by publicly dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on
| something besides civilian targets.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This was debated at the time. It was ultimately rejected: 1)
| What if the bomb didn't work? 2) What if the bomb was
| recovered by the Japanese? 3) What if they ignored the
| demonstration? 4) What if a single Allied soldier died who
| would not have died if they had dropped it on a military
| target?
|
| I suggest the first two books of Richard Rhode's book "Making
| of the Atomic Bomb", which goes into this.
| csee wrote:
| (1) and (2) make no sense. The bomb is more likely to be
| recovered by the Japanese if it is dropped on a city.
|
| (3) then you drop one demo and have two real ones if they
| don't surrender to the demo within a few days.
|
| (4) that sucks but that's how it goes, you can't seriously
| be saying it's justified to kill 200k Japanese civilians to
| save a small handful of allied lives in the intervening
| days while we wait for their response to the demo bomb.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Again - read Richard Rhode's book.
|
| And yes - That's exactly the frame of reference that war
| planners used. The axis powers went further, not only was
| all of the Jewish, Slav, British, China, and American
| lives not worth any of their own, their own peoples lives
| were not worth it.
|
| Not a pleasant thought to think of - but go look at the
| ideologies that the Axis powers actually embraced,
| instead of cartoon nazis and modern day revisionisms.
| csee wrote:
| I am hardly apologizing for the Axis powers here, I
| believe the war against them was just and necessary. I am
| just trying to understand the points you raised above
| without having to read through the two books.
| arbitrage wrote:
| The US didn't have enough material for extra bombs. They
| had enough for two. That was part of the military
| consideration for the targets, as well.
| csee wrote:
| Then why couldn't they drop one demo bomb in a sparsely
| populated area, wait a week, then drop the second one in
| a population center if no surrender is forthcoming? Is
| the delta is probability of surrender really that much
| lower that it's not worth trying to save 200k civilians
| via this approach?
| InTheArena wrote:
| You've lost surprise - and the psychological shock that
| comes with it. Remember that the Allies wanted to
| maximize that shock, because it gave the dissident forces
| inside of the Japanese cabinet the most room to challenge
| the continue prosecution of the war.
|
| In this, they were absolutely correct.
| csee wrote:
| Possibly, but it seems speculative to me that this was an
| important thing. I imagine it would have been very
| surprising and shocking to have a demo nuke dropped a few
| miles away from Tokyo. Maybe _less_ shocking, and that
| difference in shock value reduces the probability of
| surrender by an unacceptable amount?
| InTheArena wrote:
| This isn't really correct. They had extra material that
| they wanted to use - but the Army (get this) wanted to
| collect bombs after the first two, so they could use them
| to nuke the beaches prior to Americans landing there.
|
| Yeah. a) they made the assumption that the nukes would
| not be enough, and b) planned for US soldiers to walk on
| post-bombing irradiated landings.
| jleyank wrote:
| The scale and effect of radiation was not appreciated in
| the 40's and probably not into the 60's, given the scale
| of air testing. I thought much/most of the cast of a John
| Wayne movie (Ghengis Khan?) ended up with some kind of
| cancer after being downwind of a Nevada test?
|
| Look for The Atomic Cafe on the 'Net to see what the
| training films from back then had to say.
| detaro wrote:
| It wasn't "we have two and then can't make more", but
| rather slow production: ~10 days per bomb forecast over
| the next months. (a third one would have been ready still
| in August, a few days after the surrender)
| xibalba wrote:
| > you can't seriously be saying it's justified to kill
| 200k Japanese civilians to save a small handful of allied
| lives
|
| I absolutely would argue in favor of this. In fact, I
| would argue that it would have been morally just to kill
| every last Japanese person, military or not, if Japan
| refused surrender (which was part of the Emperor's plan
| for self preservation). Remember the context: 1) Japan
| attacked the U.S. to initiate hostilities and 2) Japanese
| resistance became _more_ fierce, fanatical, and deadly
| (ex: suicide bombings by both military and civilians) as
| the U.S. approached mainland Japan.
| trasz wrote:
| comrh wrote:
| > to kill every last Japanese person, military or not
|
| This is a war crime.
| xibalba wrote:
| The entire concept of "war crime" is a post hoc
| rationalization for killing one's enemies after the
| conclusion of hostilities (see Nuremberg trials). It is
| also semantically redundant. It's like saying "candy
| chocolate" or "dirty mud".
|
| Further, for much of human history, genocide (or the
| attempt thereof) was standard practice in warfare. In
| other words, this is a 20th century neologism and not
| some kind of timeless truth.
|
| How many people would you kill to stay alive? Or to keep
| your loved ones alive? The truth is, you can't know as it
| is impossible to simulate that scenario unless you're
| actually in it. But if I had to guess, for the average
| person, the number would be much greater than 1.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The entire concept of "war crime" is a post hoc
| rationalization for killing one's enemies after the
| conclusion of hostilities (see Nuremberg trials.)
|
| The concept of universal laws of war to which all
| participants are bound and in principal accountable long
| predates the Nuremberg trials.
|
| > Further, for much of human history, genocide (or the
| attempt thereof) was standard practice in warfare
|
| For most of human history, slavery was a standard
| practice, both in and out of warfare, that doesn't make
| it right.
| xibalba wrote:
| You seem to misunderstand me. I don't make an argument
| for its "rightness".
|
| Rather, war crimes will _always_ occur in war. And the
| primitive instinct to stay alive, at almost any price, is
| programmed into us. When faced with existential threats
| to our loved ones, these ivory tower questions about the
| relative worths of lives (100:1? 10:1?) are exposed for
| the nonsense they always were. Our biological programming
| kicks in: "survive at any cost - protect your own -
| eradicate the threat". It is only subsequent generations,
| from upon high in their ivory towers and far removed from
| the threat, who are able to condemn the savagery of the
| survivors.
|
| In other words, it is always best to not enter a war.
| Perhaps even if attacked. 9/11 and the U.S.'s insane and
| disastrous responses in Afghanistan and Iraq being the
| latest demonstrations.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Not if the Japanese person was running at you with a
| weapon in-hand:
|
| > _In addition, the Japanese had organized the Volunteer
| Fighting Corps, which included all healthy men aged 15 to
| 60 and women 17 to 40 for a total of 28 million people,
| for combat support and, later, combat jobs. Weapons,
| training and uniforms were generally lacking: many were
| armed with nothing better than antiquated firearms,
| molotov cocktails, longbows, swords, knives, bamboo or
| wooden spears, and even clubs and truncheons: they were
| expected to make do with what they had.[63][64] One
| mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself
| issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American
| soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."[65]
| They were expected to serve as a "second defense line"
| during the Allied invasion, and to conduct guerrilla
| warfare in urban areas and mountains._
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Ground
| _forc...
|
| At the very least it would be a form of self-defence.
| csee wrote:
| You would trade off 200k Japanese civilians for, say,
| 1000 allied lives? What ratio is morally justified?
|
| If you are arguing that a 200:1 ratio is acceptable, I
| believe this is a morally bankrupt perspective, given
| that the consequence of this is a genocide of a people
| who are otherwise perfectly normal without the broken
| software that was running in their minds and their
| society at the time, and given that it is a
| collectivistic perspective that assigns moral guilt to an
| entire civilian population (including children) instead
| of the specific individual bad actors that caused the
| situation.
|
| Regarding the latter point - on this premise that every
| single Japanese person shared moral culpability for what
| Japan was doing - it can't be squared with an
| understanding of what actually happened. I mean, the
| existence of children is a QED against it. But even just
| talking adults - At that stage the country was a fascist
| dictatorship, with multiple democratically elected
| leaders assassinated by the military (which was taken
| over by a fanatical fascist contingent in the 1930s) and
| a tremendous propaganda effort by the military to control
| all information and brainwash the general public into
| thinking they were doing good and just work overseas.
| Combine this with a poor, ignorant farmer population, and
| I don't think the simple moral prism that you're applying
| works.
| nradov wrote:
| What ratio are you arguing is morally acceptable? Please
| give us a specific number with justification.
|
| It's easy to act morally superior decades later. We're
| not the ones who were forced to make a hard decision in
| extreme circumstances. How could President Truman
| possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one
| more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy
| civilians?
| csee wrote:
| Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?
|
| If it's 10:1, then that's basically saying that Japanese
| adult civilian lives are worth absolutely nothing and can
| be killed without any moral concern, but Japanese
| children are worth the same as allied lives.
|
| Going any further (e.g 200:1) is unjustifible unless we
| adopt the collectivistic moral guilt framework where one
| has moral guilt (including children) simply for existing
| in that country at that time, irrespective of individual
| culpability. "How could President Truman
| possibly morally justify telling Americans that even one
| more of their sons had to die in order to protect enemy
| civilians?"
|
| Just because the general public would find it difficult
| to put moral worth into civilian lives of an enemy
| doesn't make those lives worthless.
|
| I also don't like the language of calling them enemy
| civilians. They are civilians who live in a country
| that's currently an enemy.
| xibalba wrote:
| > _Somewhere between 1:1 and 10:1?_
|
| Are you asking a question?
|
| > _Going any further (e.g 200:1)_
|
| You're engaging in pseudo-intellectual quantification
| that is meaningless and unbound by anything objective.
| But that's besides the point.
|
| The point is, the U.S. was pulled into war by Japan and
| did not have had any obligation to lose even one more
| person to end the conflict. And yet the calculus was
| clear: the loss of life by the U.S. was going to
| significantly increase per unit of effort/victory as it
| approached mainland Japan.
|
| > _doesn 't make those lives worthless_
|
| No one is arguing this. But when it comes to the life of
| my son or brother vs. the life of someone I don't know, I
| know what my choice will be every single time. And I
| would bet my entire net worth that 999 out of 1,000
| people would choose similarly in that situation. The
| instinct to stay alive completely outstrips armchair
| intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight.
| csee wrote:
| I am offering my opinion, but you already knew that and
| were just being sarcastic.
|
| It is also not meaningless, you simply totally ignored
| the rationale I provided for the 10:1 figure. It's the
| ratio that roughly equalizes the moral worth of allied
| troops with Japanese children.
|
| Admittedly this is all subjective, but that also applies
| to your opinions. "The point is, the U.S.
| was pulled into war by Japan and did not have had any
| obligation to lose even one more person to end the
| conflict."
|
| The US wasn't pulled into war by Japanese children,
| though, and you seem to be perfectly fine with their
| extermination under your perverse doctrine of collective
| guilt. "No one is arguing this. But when
| it comes to the life of my son or brother vs. the life of
| someone I don't know, I know what my choice will be every
| single time. And I would bet my entire net worth that 999
| out of 1,000 people would choose similarly in that
| situation. The instinct to stay alive completely
| outstrips armchair intellectualism and 20/20 hindsight"
|
| People decide to do lots of shitty things for all sorts
| of reasons. The mere act of deciding to do said shitty
| thing and the fact that that shitty thing is a popular
| choice doesn't make it less shitty and doesn't serve as a
| moral justification.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Surely the bombs would be of no scientific use after
| smashing to the ground?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The first two risks are unchanged, a failed and recovered
| Little Boy always carried the same risk. Three, what if
| they ignored the bombings? And four I think you misstated,
| but how do we know a single more allied soldier didn't die
| because we dropped it on a civilian target?
|
| I've read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb."
| rrss wrote:
| The first two risks are only unchanged for a
| demonstration that was not announced to japan, and IMO a
| demonstration of a nuclear bomb without telling Japan to
| observe it would not have been effective.
|
| After the bombing of Hiroshima, Suzuki stated to the
| press that Japan would not surrender, which suggests to
| me that bombing the middle of nowhere as a demonstration
| would probably not have persuaded the Japanese government
| to surrender. Why would a non military demonstration have
| been more impactful than bombing a city?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Politicians tell bullshit all the time. If they say they
| will surrender in a week, it's very hard to convince the
| cannon folder to continue fighting while they negotiate
| some kind of amnesty for the top level generals.
| panick21_ wrote:
| There were not military targets worth targeting.
| nradov wrote:
| Perhaps, but at the time the supply of nuclear weapons was
| very small. US leaders weren't sure how many they would need
| to use in order to compel an unconditional surrender so they
| couldn't afford to waste one on a demonstration and then
| potentially be caught short.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| We already "wasted" one on a demonstration, and what was
| the great risk of being caught short? Japan potentially
| faces another round of conventional bombing?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The trinity test was a proof of concept. It was not
| anything close to a production ready bomb.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > The Trinity Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device, as
| was the Fat Man used a few weeks later in the bombing of
| Nagasaki. The two were very similar, with only minor
| differences, the most obvious being the absence of fuzing
| and the external ballistic casing. The bombs were still
| under development, and small changes continued to be made
| to the Fat Man design.
|
| So, not identical. But "not anything close" seems wrong.
| maxk42 wrote:
| Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki were civilian targets.
| Hiroshima was the headquarters for the Japanese 2nd Army,
| which defended half of Japan and Nagasaki was the production
| center for 90% of the Japanese fleet. Both were critical
| military targets.
| gumby wrote:
| A lot of criticism of the atomic bombing is context free 20-20
| hindsight.
|
| Big armies are like huge complex ships: they take a while to
| get moving, are hard to steer and hard to stop. So one can
| criticize the destruction of Dresden, but you also have to
| remember that the UK had built a machine that threw planes into
| the air and there was little correlation between the amount of
| armaments being sent and the number of targets available (or
| accounting to reduced opposition). Yet that machine was a small
| part of a huge effort, and was probably only paid attention to
| by the high command when something went wrong. And not to
| mention the rage and anger on the part of a bunch of people who
| had been bombed themselves for years.
|
| My wife grew up near a town in Germany that was bombed for the
| first time, and utterly flattened, in late April 1945.
| Absolutely no strategic value; they had simply wiped out
| everything above it on the list so now it was their turn. I
| never heard anyone complain about it (and boy old people were
| happy to give you an earful about all sorts of things).
|
| For more lack of retrospective context: As for the atomic bomb,
| don't forget Turman only heard about it when he became
| president. And all sorts of facts that seem clear today were
| completely unclear back then. What would the soviets actually
| do? Was Okinawa an example of what the invasion would be like?
| Japan still occupied Manchuria and other parts of Asia.
| Intelligence on the risks the Allies faced was still thin.
|
| And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were rebelling
| (even turning their arms against their officers) at the
| prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Absolutely no strategic value
|
| Was there industry in or near the town that supported the
| German war effort? Were there German military units stationed
| in or near the town? I'm not saying it's right but the term
| "strategic value" had a very different definition in WWII.
| Any and all war effort or suspected war effort had "strategic
| value".
|
| > And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were
| rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers) at
| the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre.
|
| I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread
| occurrence?
| thetallstick wrote:
| >> And don't forget that allied troops in Europe were
| rebelling (even turning their arms against their officers)
| at the prospect of being shipped to the pacific theatre. >
| I've never heard of this- was this really a widespread
| occurrence?
|
| I also never heard of widespread armed rebellion but
| definitely there was a lot of animosity over who got to go
| home, who got to stay, and who had to go to the Pacific. I
| would not have wanted that job.
|
| https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/points-
| system...
| ezconnect wrote:
| I would have agreed on the use of the atomic bomb if they
| didn't use it on a city. They could have demonstrated on a
| smaller island or a navy outpost near Japan or on Japan. The US
| have shown no pity bombing city and killing innocents during
| world war 2 so I think for the US generals showing off your new
| bomb by erasing two city is a good strategy for them.
| avereveard wrote:
| You're thinking as a modern man. The public in Japan would
| have heard nothing about a show of force done in the middle
| of nowhere. Heck, for all the public was concerned, the naval
| war had been going great.
| ezconnect wrote:
| The public does not decide what to do on an ongoing war
| specially during the imperial Japanese rule or any modern
| war with an organized army. The Americans just have a habit
| of destroying city with non combatants during world war 2,
| they've done it in Europe and Asia.
| bonsoir wrote:
| Copium
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Bomb was unique in that it was purely psychological in
| nature. It was a weapon that removed any chance that the
| Japanese leaders could sacrifice their own people to buy their
| escape from the war.
|
| This was literally the policy of the Japanese government - "The
| Glorious Death of One Hundred Million". Sacrifice every
| Japanese life to preserve the Emperor, and more importantly,
| his militaristic governments.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
|
| There is a awful lot of moral relativism in these threads.
| Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that there
| was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the western
| powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in World War
| 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep dive into what
| these states were really about.
| mmustapic wrote:
| And the US was fine going along. "We'll keep killing
| civilians till you surrender".
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| As a civilian, I reject the notion that I am a sheep with
| no responsibility for the actions of my government.
| Discuss.
| fulafel wrote:
| In a democracy it's an easier position to argue.
| InTheArena wrote:
| This. Or to put it another way - Winston Churchill said
| this in 1901:
|
| "The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of
| kings."
|
| German actions and Japanese actions where enabled by the
| people in those countries. Less, in truth, in Japan then
| in Germany, but still there.
|
| Yamamoto could have resigned.
| mc32 wrote:
| And their leadership had shown that they were willing to
| sacrifice all their civilians (100MM) if it saved their
| emperor-military system.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Weird thing is Imperial Japanese system was something the
| country adopted as part of modernization effort over
| military Shogunate system. During the Edo era under
| Tokugawa shogunate, the country kept the borders closed
| with little effort being made to expand for literally
| multiple centuries. Only after the Meiji government was
| established and it made efforts to "reach and surpass
| Europe" the Imperial Japan stuff happened.
| mmustapic wrote:
| How were they sacrificing the civilians that lived in the
| Japan island? They were just there, breathing, eating and
| doing their lives, not shooting soldiers or invading
| countries. The US decided that it was fine to burn them
| alive to defeat the emperor-military system.
|
| You can argue that it was a better alternative than an
| invasion or some other strategy, sure. But the reality is
| that the civilians, who couldn't go anywhere else, were
| killed, en masse, by bombs dropped by the US.
| mc32 wrote:
| >They were just there, breathing, eating and doing their
| lives, not shooting soldiers or invading countries.
|
| Japan had factories, of course, but a lot of the
| ancillary things to war, like uniforms, etc., were made
| in people's homes, rice and so on was reserved for
| soldiers and the surplus was then distributed in the
| communities. The economy was massively focused on
| furthering the war effort --even moreso than the US.
|
| I think you need to listen and watch Japanese programming
| from that era to get the picture of how involved the
| civilian population was in the war effort.
| mmustapic wrote:
| The US was doing exactly the same! Building planes,
| tanks, sending food, making uniforms and weapons. There
| were even food coupons. Do you think it would've been
| fine for Japan to attack with atomic bombs a couple of US
| cities? Would you consider that a mass killing of
| civilians?
| mc32 wrote:
| And? If Japan could have, they would have done what they
| had at their disposal to neutralize us as their enemy.
|
| War is not fine. Dropping bombs is not fine. But they
| would have. They had plans to build bombs for exactly
| that, to drop on US cities. they also had plans to engage
| in biological warfare on US soil. So, yes, they would
| have. Japan was indiscriminate when they attacked China.
| If they had had the ability to reach US soil, they would
| have waged the same here, no doubt about it at all.
|
| Germany would have done the same too. I mean, those guys
| were not fooling around. Do you think the US, the UK and
| the SU should have taken it easy with Germany because
| eventually we would have won a "kinder" (no pun intended)
| war?
| mmustapic wrote:
| My question is: if Japan would have done that, would you
| consider it a war crime, or an atrocity?
|
| We can use phrases like "neutralise the enemy", but the
| reality is, hundreds of thousands of civilians were
| killed in order to defeat the enemy.
| mc32 wrote:
| War is crime. It's preposterous to frame it as not a
| crime. Crimes will happen in war, whether a "good" war or
| war on the "bad" side. War is crime. There should be no
| confusion about that.
|
| In the end, would have the Japanese population suffered
| more with a conventional ground war vs firebombings or
| atomic bombings? I believe the consensus is stopping the
| war as quickly as possible spared the population the
| worst of it.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Then we agree, and that was my point, Allied bombings of
| mostly civilians is a crime.
| mc32 wrote:
| Not "Allied" but all bombings, including Axis bombings of
| purely civilians were a crime. However, you have to make
| a decision do you engage or sit back and watch the larger
| crime happen?
|
| In great wars like this the distinction between military
| and civilian is tenuous. Japan, like Germany, was
| thoroughly a martial economy.
|
| If you start a fire, don't complain later you got burnt.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Just to be clear - the Japanese factories where in the
| cities. The Japanese pulled apart their factories and ran
| forges in people's backyards.
|
| Japanese civilians in battle zones routinely walked up to
| Allied soldiers with grenades to blow them up. They threw
| themselves off cliffs rather then surrender.
|
| We still have this concept that somehow the German and
| Japanese citizens where not involved in the actions of
| their governments. It's as much of a myth as the myth of
| a "Clean Wehrmacht"
| mmustapic wrote:
| Of course you have factories in cities, where would they
| be? They needed to be close to the workers.
|
| And about civilians attacking Allied soldiers, do you
| have references for people in Tokyo, Hiroshima or
| Nagasaki doing it?
| volkl48 wrote:
| Commenting on the latter point:
|
| The Battle of Okinawa seems like an example - Both
| willingly and by coercion, a large portion of the
| civilian population was sent into the battle to die with
| minimal training or equipment, including children.
|
| Is there some reason to think the populations of those
| cities would have acted differently if the front lines
| came to them at that time?
| InTheArena wrote:
| No. just to be clear:
|
| They literally disassembled their factories in many
| cases, and put equipment into people's houses. The broke
| the factories into workshops, which where highly
| inefficient. The Japanese believed this would make them
| resistant to bombing, but also scale well since they
| didn't have to centralize at single sites. (the exact
| opposite of Fordism). They were incorrect on both counts.
|
| And no, there are no documented records of people in
| Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima doing it - killing people
| tends to make them unable to engage in further violence
| (though it may encourage societies to further violence).
| but there are records in Okinawa, and in virtually every
| other sizable Japanese population engaging in violence.
|
| That even includes in Hawaii. See the Nihau incident.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Well of course civilians will fight invaders in Okinawa,
| it's their homeland. The Nihau incident, on the other
| hand, involved hawaiians, not japanese. If you consider
| them part of the japanese population, what about the US?
| How many americans from japanese descent attacked
| soldiers there?
|
| About the bombings, the targeted bombing wasn't working
| very well because of weather, so they decided to
| obliterate cities with incendiary bombs, civilians and
| all.
|
| But returning to mass murdering civilians to advance
| military objectives: what would you think of the Soviet
| Union destroying with atomic weapons Munich and
| Frankfurt, to force Hitler to an unconditional surrender?
| Would reducing the deaths of soviet soldiers be a good
| justification?
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Hawaii's where the ones attacked by the Japanese
| natives who were on the islands.
|
| Your point is good - that's a isolated event - but it was
| a isolated event that was taken into account in the
| military actions that followed.
|
| And yes. If the soviet union had destroyed munich and
| frankfurt (Frankfurt was the transportation hub of the
| western front) to force Hitler to surrender it would have
| been justified. To draw the full conclusion - it would
| not have been justified to bomb Geneva (since it wasn't a
| military target).
|
| And frankly, bombing Frankfurt would have been far far
| less heinous then what the Red Army did to East Prussia,
| which could not be justified. The difference there is
| that the soviets had already overrun Prussia when they
| committed their war atrocities. Likewise, what US solders
| did to German PoW in more isolated circumstances.
| InTheArena wrote:
| What is your alternative? Starvation Blockade, or military
| invasion?
|
| Do you understand what the Japanese state did to the
| Chinese and other peoples of southeast Asian and
| westerners?
| mmustapic wrote:
| Yes, they killed civilians hoping they will surrender.
| eitland wrote:
| The point is the WWII Nazis and Japanese are famous for
| killing / torturing people even after they surrendered.
|
| I'm not saying others didn't, but Nazis and Japanese took
| it to another level than the west. (Although to be fair
| Sovjet Communists should be mentioned together with
| them.)
| numpad0 wrote:
| We kind of still do.
| mmustapic wrote:
| Yes, you are correct, Nazis and Japanese committed war
| crimes. And the US dropped not one, but two atomic bombs
| to majorly civilian population centers. Different scales,
| different philosophy, but mass murder of civilians just
| the same.
| InTheArena wrote:
| As pointed out many times - under any definition at the
| time, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki where military
| targets.
|
| On the other other Kyoto was not - and was removed
| because of that.
| mmustapic wrote:
| The definition of "military target" was an arbitrary
| definition (like most definitions) done by those who
| decided to bomb them. Kyoto was also a possible target
| favoured by the military, and it was replaced by
| Nagasaki.
|
| And as you know, Hiroshima was chosen because it was
| undamaged and the effects of the bomb could be studied.
| So we can add "weapons testing on civilians" to the list
| of crimes.
| SllX wrote:
| You don't start putting together charges unless you
| intend to prosecute.
|
| The US will not be prosecuted in the future for dropping
| A-Bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. So what
| exactly is your aim?
| [deleted]
| Aidevah wrote:
| >Frankly, I strongly recommend that people who think that
| there was some sort of equivilent between the Nazis and the
| western powers, or between the Japanese and the Americans in
| World War 2 put down youtube videos, and really do a deep
| dive into what these states were really about.
|
| There is no moral equivalence between the allies and the
| axis. But even a just war can be waged unjustly by the good
| side. Is it really a good look to compete with the most
| vicious regimes in history how cruelly one can treat one's
| opponents, particularly those who are just caught on the
| wrong side? Is it collective punishment to treat an entire
| civilian population under military dictatorship as culpable
| as the members of the junta themselves? Even if it's
| collateral damage, under what circumstances is it justifiable
| to burn to death 100000 men women and children in one night?
| I don't see moral relativism in raising these questions at
| all, rather a consistent moral stance which applies the same
| standards to all scenarios, friend or foe.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.
|
| Probably more of a modern rationalization/justification for the
| bombings and quite questionable. Consider:
|
| The US strategic bombing survey (an "impartial assessment of
| the effects of strategic bombing") concluded:
|
| > "Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and
| supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders
| involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31
| December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945,
| Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not
| been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even
| if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| They were ready to surrender with conditions. In the end the
| US allowed them to surrender with a single condition
| regarding the emperor. Is there any information regarding
| what their other conditions may have been?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous
| sources out of context and uncritically. USSBS was basically
| the same people who had been advocating massive strategic
| bombing the entire war writing up a report on how effective
| their own efforts had been. They're not going to come out and
| say "Yeah, we achieved nothing in Japan and it was only the
| nukes or Soviets that had any effect". That's not to say the
| report is useless, just read things more critically.
|
| Whether the bombs were the sole-cause of the surrender is a
| rather different discussion, and one I understand few
| historians would argue. It seems difficult to argue that they
| had _no_ effect given that we now have records of what
| Japanese leadership was discussing at the time and atomics
| feature prominently, alongside the soviet invasion. That 's
| why the whole consensus school thing exists, because neither
| was obviously definitive.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > It's not generally a good idea to take contemporaneous
| sources out of context and uncritically
|
| Sure. But to be fair-- there were tons of civilian experts
| involved that had no great personal stake; It's not like it
| was written by arms manufacturer lobbyists or generals
| personally involved in past decision making.
|
| And I'm mostly missing strong fact-based counterarguments,
| so my personal opinion is going to remain that the atomic
| bombings probably _expedited_ Japans surrender, but were
| not necessary (nor would a ground invasion have been).
| InTheArena wrote:
| You do realize that this statement was in the context of
| justifying further fire-bombing of Japan's cities? Each one
| of which would be more violent then the nuclear bombs?
| myrmidon wrote:
| Strongly disagree.
|
| First: This was written after the war was over--
| "justifying further fire-bombing" would be pretty
| ineffective at that point.
|
| Also, to quote from the survey: > We underestimated the
| ability of our air attack on Japan's home islands, coupled
| as it was with blockade and previous military defeats, to
| achieve unconditional surrender without invasion. By July
| 1945, the weight of our air attack had as yet reached only
| a fraction of its planned proportion, Japan's industrial
| potential had been fatally reduced, her civilian population
| had lost its confidence in victory and was approaching the
| limit of its endurance, and her leaders, convinced of the
| inevitability of defeat, were preparing to accept
| surrender. The only remaining problem was the timing and
| terms of that surrender.
|
| This does NOT read like a justification for *more* fire-
| bombing to me, but rather like a "we bombed them much more
| than necessary before July already".
| FpUser wrote:
| >"I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives."
|
| Oh please. Don't bring that saving lives bullshit here. The
| last thing the US cared about at that time was saving Japanese
| lives. War is an ugly business. So if you want to look warm and
| fuzzy stay out of it as much as possible.
| xibalba wrote:
| > the military dictators of Japan did not plan to surrender
|
| The U.S. was on solid ground in its conduct of _any_ form of
| bombing up until a Japanese surrender-including massive
| conventional bombing campaigns and atomic bombings. Japan
| launched an unprovoked attack on the U.S. at Pear Harbor to
| initiate hostilities. Fighting, as the U.S. approached mainland
| Japan, became _more_ fierce and costly. Any number of dead
| Japanese--military or civilian, was better than one more dead
| U.S. serviceman.
| hristov wrote:
| "I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives."
|
| You are absolutely wrong about that. A cursory examination
| would reveal that Japan was ready to surrender before the bombs
| were dropped. There was only one condition that they get to
| keep their emperor, but the allies ended up following that
| condition even after the unconditional surrender, so that just
| wasn't relevant.
|
| And the logic that the atomic bombs were not that bad because
| there were even worse bombings is just wrong.
| s5300 wrote:
| There's a small bit of truth to the A-bombs saving
| japanese/American lives if negotiations of surrender were to
| fall through
|
| But I think modern day, the A-bombs are largely viewed as a
| show of force against the Soviets. Sort of like D-Day was so
| Soviets couldn't steamroll Germany & then take all of Europe
| as well...
| fatbird wrote:
| This is incorrect. We have the diary of Shigenori Tojo,
| foreign minister of Japan in August 1945. He describes in
| detail the cabinet proceedings before and after the dropping
| of the bombs. Even after the bombs were dropped, half the
| cabinet (the military half) was still holding out for the
| terms they'd been offering all along: no foreign occupation,
| Japan retreats to pre-war borders, Japan handles its won
| disarmament, and Japan retains the Imperial gov't, meaning
| the whole structure that started the war in the first place.
| The Emperor overruled them, but only did so after dropping
| the bombs because Japan has a long history of emperors being
| sequestered by the Shogun or cabinet when they did not
| respect the prerogatives of the actual governing entity.
|
| What the Japanese actually offered for surrender was
| unconditional surrender except for being allowed to keep a
| figurehead emperor, which the U.S. recognized as useful for
| governing post-war Japan, and accepted.
| dpedu wrote:
| > A cursory examination would reveal that Japan was ready to
| surrender before the bombs were dropped. There was only one
| condition that they get to keep their emperor, but the allies
| ended up following that condition even after the
| unconditional surrender, so that just wasn't relevant.
|
| So what you're actually saying is, they weren't willing to
| surrender under the terms offered to them?
| wozer wrote:
| > While any bombing is tragic, the atomic bombs are not worse
| than other.
|
| Maybe I misunderstood, but I think atomic bombs are much worse
| because using atomic bombs you can destroy a whole country in a
| matter of minutes.
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms
| allowed for the emperor to remain in power. This was actually
| in the original surrender draft, but Truman wanted to drop the
| bombs so he removed the provision at the last minute.
|
| In the end we dropped the bombs and then let the emperor stay
| in power anyway.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Grew#Atomic_bomb_dilemm...
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > Japan would have been willing to surrender, if the terms
| allowed for the emperor to remain in power.
|
| Conjecture
|
| > but Truman wanted to drop the bombs so
|
| Also conjecture
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| not really, I saw a documentary about it when I was in
| Japan.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| ... that doesn't make it not conjecture.
| js2 wrote:
| Re: Truman wanted to drop the bombs.
|
| > At the time, the president seemed conflicted over his
| decision. The day after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped,
| Truman received a telegram from Senator Richard B. Russell of
| Georgia, encouraging the president to use as many atomic
| bombs as possible on Japan, claiming the American people
| believed "that we should continue to strike the Japanese
| until they are brought groveling to their knees." Truman
| responded, "I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and
| uncivilized nation in warfare but I can't bring myself to
| believe that because they are beasts, we should ourselves act
| in that same manner. For myself I certainly regret the
| necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the
| 'pigheadedness' of the leaders of a nation, and, for your
| information, I am not going to do it unless absolutely
| necessary."
|
| ...
|
| > Looking back, President Truman never shirked personal
| responsibility for his decision, but neither did he
| apologize. He asserted that he would not use the bomb in
| later conflicts, such as Korea. Nevertheless, given the same
| circumstances and choices that confronted him in Japan in
| 1945, he said he would do exactly the same thing.
|
| https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| Your quotes are from the US government, my claims are
| paraphrasing things i learned via Japanese media while in
| Japan. the truth is probably somewhere in between.
| js2 wrote:
| > Your quotes are from the US government
|
| You wrote that "Truman wanted to drop the bombs" and I've
| provided a quote from Truman himself that refutes this
| assertion. You can't have a better source to Truman's
| state of mind than Truman.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Japanese media and text books are notoriously light
| on truth. You should not take them at face value.
|
| And certainly realize that the decision to use the atomic
| bombs was not made in Tokyo. Their strategic use was not
| defined by Stalin.
| mzvkxlcvd wrote:
| >The Japanese media and text books are notoriously light
| on truth. You should not take them at face value.
|
| and american media and text books are not? i think people
| are just uncomfortable with the possibility that the
| bombings may not have been justified
| InTheArena wrote:
| America academia doesn't ignore things that are shameful
| in it's history (despite perceptions). For my thesis in
| college I spent a year studying differential behaviors
| between Into-European colonialism and Amerindian
| genocide. My son (a 7th grader) is learning about chattel
| slavery right now.
|
| Japanese text books generally don't mention World War II
| beyond "we attacked Hawaii and got unfairly nuked in
| return". The Japanese historical community is remarkably
| unengaged from international scholarship on world war 2.
| This has been commented on at length from the rest of the
| international community. It causes massive friction today
| in South East Asia.
|
| You keep casting aspersions with no factual basis or
| external authorities.
| vmception wrote:
| > I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.
|
| I heard of the relentless Japanese insurgency growing up. My
| own research did not produce that result for the time leading
| up to the atomic bomb and I find the atomic bombing
| unnecessary. It is noteworthy that I am _not_ comparing
| potential death tolls. I _am_ comparing ionizing radiation
| though and its long tail effects, to the lack of them.
|
| I am also mostly of the opinion of the idea that Japan was
| going to surrender.
|
| There were a lot of proposals between fire bombing and nuclear
| bombs, some of the proposals are actually hilarious and others
| are pretty interesting and some even seem practical.
|
| My view of the atomic bombs were that they were dropped because
| we wanted to drop them. It doesn't cause me consternation to
| acknowledge that and I just wish other people would. We nuked
| two cities and told everyone else to never do it themselves, we
| even gave them their country back and let them whitewash all
| the education around the event, why not just say that? I view
| all of the moral and rationale arguments to be surprisingly
| juvenile, when at the end of the day we do things because we
| want to. Even when comparing potential _allied_ lives saved,
| well, surprise!, we can still save allied lives by nuking
| everyone and its not an argument at all.
| fatbird wrote:
| The Japanese surrender terms were flatly unacceptable:
| retention of the Imperial gov't, no foreign occupation of
| Japan, Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to
| pre-war borders, Japan handles their own disarmament and
| prosecution of Japanese war criminals. The surrender they
| were attempting to obtain was basically a rollback to the
| status quo of 1935.
|
| As early as mid-1944, the cabinet accepted that the war was
| unwinnable for them, and their strategy shifted to
| intransigent defence in the hope that by the time the U.S.
| cleared all the islands and showed up at the Home Islands,
| they'd be too exhausted to invade and would accept the above
| terms. At no time did they offer any terms of surrender less
| than the above, including after the dropping of the atomic
| bombs (according to the diary of the foreign minister Tojo).
| Indeed, after dropping both atomic bombs, half the cabinet
| still refused to surrender.
| trasz wrote:
| So essentially the flatly unacceptable terms were the exact
| same terms that got accepted, except for the US military
| bases?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No. The difference was, the actual terms didn't leave the
| existing government in power, didn't leave Japan in
| control of its own territory, and didn't leave Japan in
| charge of prosecuting their own war criminals. Those are
| some fairly big differences.
|
| If you compare the Japanese government after the end of
| the US occupation to the Japanese government in 1935, the
| difference is stark.
| kipchak wrote:
| Didn't Japan have pretty substantial territory gains by
| 1935?
| fatbird wrote:
| No, not at all.
|
| _no foreign occupation of Japan_ The U.S. occupied Japan
| and had absolute rule over it
|
| _Japan surrenders occupied territories and returns to
| pre-war borders_ Japan was occupied by the U.S. and had
| zero territorial integrity or control over the Home
| Islands.
|
| _Japan handles their own disarmament_ The U.S. disarmed
| Japan and actually did so, rather than hide a bunch of
| war materials
|
| _prosecution of Japanese war criminals._ The U.S.
| prosecuted many Japanese war criminals, rather than hold
| a few show trials.
|
| _retention of the Imperial gov 't_ The Imperial gov't
| was disbanded and replaced with direct rule by McArthur
| until the new democratic structure was set up. A
| figurehead emperor was retained because it was useful to
| do so.
|
| In short, the Japanese surrender terms had to do with
| Japan as a nation pulling back from its conquests and
| making some notional gestures at disarmament and
| prosecution of war criminals. What they got in the end
| was complete surrender to their enemy who rebuilt their
| nation the way the enemy decided to.
|
| They were lucky insofar as the U.S. desire was to rebuild
| Japan as a prosperous democratic nation to serve as an
| eastern bulwark against communist expansion. The German
| plan for western Russia was to depopulate it and
| repopulate it with Germans.
|
| [edit: fixed formatting]
| vmception wrote:
| > The surrender they were attempting to obtain was
| basically a rollback to the status quo of 1935.
|
| Can you tell me more about the status quo of 1935 and why
| that was a problem for the US or allies?
|
| I know it is a different Japan that did brutal things in
| the region, but they didn't attack US then and they weren't
| doing.. anything relevant to the allies. The stuff in
| Europe was the issue.
|
| am I missing something?
| InTheArena wrote:
| The status quo of 1935 would leave Korea and parts of
| China in Japanese hands, and the military Junta in place.
|
| It's like saying Hitler would have made peace, as long as
| we let him have the Ukraine, and didn't mind all the jews
| he murdered.
| vmception wrote:
| okay, interesting similarity, another similarity is that
| we (the US) didn't go to war against Hitler over occupied
| lands or the murdered Jews. Some of the allies happened
| to feel obligated to go to war over the occupied lands of
| their own partners, with the latter reality about the
| killings being neglected for an entire decade. The US
| stayed out of all, until eventually it was directly
| attacked by Japan and went to war against the whole Axis.
|
| There isn't a history to support that either outcome
| would have been an absurdity.
| InTheArena wrote:
| More specifically, the United States didn't go to war at
| all against Germany until Hitler declared war on the
| United States.
|
| But it's worth noting that he did so, because Roosevelt,
| in his eyes, was the chief Agent of the jews.
|
| So in other way, the United States did go to war because
| of murdered jews. But that is because he saw the United
| States as agents of the Jews.
| vmception wrote:
| Ridiculous miscalculation.
|
| yes, I'm reading about the order of events now. Germany
| declared war on US after US declared war on Japan.
| Germany's agreement with Japan did not provide for this
| kind of assurance if Japan attacked another country
| first. Hitler dismissed this reminder and had low regard
| for US military largely due to his blind hatred and
| belief that the country was weakened by Jewish and
| African Americans. whoops. what dumb ideas.
|
| I get what you are saying, the reason I think it is a
| stretch to focus on the Jewish people murdered in Europe,
| is because the US mistreated them too, before, then and
| for decades after. It relies on retroactively applying
| sympathy towards Jewish people, to make it seem like the
| US and allies were actually involved for moral reasons,
| and morals reasons that included oppressed Jewish people.
| Liberating the camps was a stretch goal that occurred
| once soldiers busted into them and saw how dire it was
| first hand. People suspected, of course.
| InTheArena wrote:
| Interestingly enough, that view is being challenged right
| now. (I have a book on my bookshelf waiting for my
| intention).
|
| Taking Hitler's second book more at it's words - its more
| that Hitler desperately wanted to get Japan into the War
| to keep America out of the war long enough to knock
| Soviet Russia out. He committed to declaring war on
| America if Japan did (prior to 12/1) to try and get Japan
| to take the brunt of the damage up front front.
|
| Hitler bet that like in 1918, it would simply take a long
| time for the USA to build up it's armament. But it's also
| clear that Hitler viewed the United States - as agents of
| World Jewry - and it's continent of resources as the
| ultimate opponent for a unified germanic Europe.
|
| (The best source off the top of my head for this PoV is
| Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction).
| soperj wrote:
| > More specifically, the United States didn't go to war
| at all against Germany until Hitler declared war on the
| United States.
|
| You can say the same about Germany. They didn't go to war
| against France and England until they declared war on
| Germany.
| vanusa wrote:
| _I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives._
|
| You can believe that if you want of course - but it seems
| simplistic at best to ignore other factors, such as the planned
| Soviet entry into the war on August 15. And some believe even
| that wouldn't have been necessary:
|
| _Asked in 1945 for his opinion on dropping the atomic bomb,
| General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower replied: "I was
| against it on two counts. First the Japanese were ready to
| surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful
| thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use
| such a weapon." Fleet Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to
| both Roosevelt and Truman, flatly declared 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." Even the official US
| Strategic Bombing Survey concluded unequivocally that "Japan
| would have surrendered if the atomic bombs had not been
| dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no
| invasion had been planned or contemplated."_
| missedthecue wrote:
| The Soviets would not have been able to make a meaningful
| entry to the war in Japan at that time. Firstly because
| almost all of their armed forces were in Europe and secondly
| because they didn't have a pacific fleet.
|
| Just for context, the invasion of the island of Okinawa just
| weeks prior had consisted of more than 1,600 allied ships.
| Japan would have to be a much larger task. Where were the
| Soviets going to get thousands of ships?
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The Japanese empire extended into mainland east Asia at the
| time. There's no reason why the soviets couldn't have made
| meaningful entry into the war against Japan through
| Manchuria and the Korea peninsula.
| missedthecue wrote:
| They had already done that. At that point, Japan didn't
| care a whole lot about those territories. The IJN barely
| bothered to make a defense and the Japanese Imperial Navy
| opted out entirely.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuri
| a
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Well, that's what I meant. I didn't realize that you
| didn't consider invasion of Japanese territory to be a
| significant entry into the war.
| thetallstick wrote:
| Maybe they weren't going to help invade mainland Japan
| straight away but there were still plenty of Japanese
| troops in China that needed to be dealt with.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
| deeg wrote:
| Ending the war before the Soviets got seriously involved was
| another ways the bombs saved Japanese lives. Stalin would
| have demanded that Japan be divided just like Germany. How
| many would have died at the hands of an Asian Stasi?
|
| Dropping the bombs was a terrible thing but war is even more
| terrible.
| caycep wrote:
| Also, history written by the victors...convenient to convey
| Curtis Lemay as a war hero vs. a war criminal that signed off
| on a raid designed to purposefully incinerate civilians.
| Whose ethnicity were constantly dehumanized as part of the
| psy-ops of conducting the war...
| dralley wrote:
| History is not necessarily written by the victors, fwiw.
| Victors frequently end up too busy running the government
| to write history books whereas the losers sometimes end up
| with a lot of free time and motivation.
|
| See: Lots of pro-Confederate "history", lots of history
| from ancient times
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _And some believe even that wouldn 't have been necessary:_
|
| Those people would be wrong as the historical record shows:
|
| > _The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent
| atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood
| enough to know how very difficult building it would be.
| Therefore, many Japanese and in particular the military
| members of the government refused to believe the United
| States had built an atomic bomb, and the Japanese military
| ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of
| Hiroshima 's destruction.[84] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief
| of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United
| States had made one, they could not have many more.[85]
| American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like
| Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the
| first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large
| supply.[61][86]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Hiroshima,
| _...
|
| Even after the second bomb there was still some disagreement:
|
| > _In the middle of the meeting, shortly after 11:00, news
| arrived that Nagasaki, on the west coast of Kyushu, had been
| hit by a second atomic bomb (called "Fat Man" by the United
| States). By the time the meeting ended, the Big Six had split
| 3-3. Suzuki, Togo, and Admiral Yonai favored Togo's one
| additional condition to Potsdam, while General Anami, General
| Umezu, and Admiral Toyoda insisted on three further terms
| that modified Potsdam: that Japan handle their own
| disarmament, that Japan deal with any Japanese war criminals,
| and that there be no occupation of Japan.[96]_
|
| * Ibid
|
| The Japanese government were still split on how to proceed
| after _two_ atomic bombs were dropped. They were willing to
| stop fighting _but only under their terms_.
|
| If Germany was willing to stop fighting, _but only if Hitler
| and the Nazis were allowed to stay in power_ (and keep a
| bunch of territory, etc), would _that_ have been acceptable?
| Because that 's basically what the Japanese were asking for.
| adventured wrote:
| Indeed the conflict (in favor of continuing the war after
| the nukes) within Japan's government was so widespread that
| literally right up to the arrival of MacArthur there was an
| intense effort internally by Japan to put down a constant
| bubbling of coup efforts from the military, which wanted to
| keep fighting to the last man (Hirohito in his famous
| broadcast to the people of Japan recognized those emotions
| and asked the people to suppress them). The Japanese people
| often also had no idea just how poorly their military was
| faring toward the end, they didn't know they were clearly
| doomed to lose (which only added to the cultural resistance
| to capitulation). And it's important to note that their
| military was by far the most powerful faction of the
| government, as such it held enormous sway as to whether the
| war continued or not.
|
| People that pretend Japan was going to surrender without
| the nukes (they barely surrendered with the nukes), are
| either liar apologists (America bad) or extraordinarily
| ignorant of what actually happened (they should read a book
| rather than regurgitating Reddit propaganda).
| major505 wrote:
| Considering that the Japanese where ready for full scale war
| against a US invasion, even using old people and children
| against the invaders...
|
| I can't alse even imagine the scale of bloodshed that an
| amphibian landing in the style of Normandy would cost in dead
| soldiers for a territory the size of japan.
|
| It was also a great bluff for the Americans, because after
| they used where able to produce 4 bombs. They tested on in
| the desert, droped 2 in japan they got only one left after
| that they where saving to clean the beaches for a possible
| invasion.
| ble wrote:
| What evidence is there, other than propaganda on both
| sides, that the Japanese were ready to use old people and
| children in a military defense?
| brimble wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Military_
| use...
|
| Also, Germany did something very similar near the end of
| the war, as they got desperate for manpower and fighting
| moved into their own territory.
|
| [EDIT] Oh, and see farther down the page for, "Civilian
| losses, suicides, and atrocities". The _lived experience_
| of Okinawa (one of only a couple "home" territories for
| Japan that the US invaded before the bombs) was surely
| part of why so many expected an invasion of Japan to be a
| bitter, horrifying bloodbath.
| rmason wrote:
| My late father who lived to 101 always felt Truman was the
| greatest president of his lifetime because he authorized
| use of those two atomic bombs. See my father knew he would
| have been part of that invasion of the Japanese mainland.
|
| At the end of his life nothing angered him more than people
| trying to say that decision was a mistake. I told him that
| these advocates weren't alive at the time and thus couldn't
| understand his point of view. They focus on what horrible
| destruction it caused and not the price Americans would pay
| if it had not been used. If there had been a ground
| invasion of Japan far more people would have died, both
| Japanese and Americans.
| golergka wrote:
| Don't you think that these quotes shouldn't be taken at face
| value, given that these officers could intend to maintain a
| public image? Who knows, may be some of those quoted here
| even dreamed about a political career after their military
| service.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > I am not the only one who believes that in the long term the
| atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives.
|
| Relatively speaking, 330000 civilian deaths is surprisingly low
| in comparison to the war in Europe.
|
| USSR lost few percents of the population immediately after the
| war due to starvation.
|
| Civilian losses to enemy troops were horrific enough without
| any airforce involved.
|
| Count went into millions in first years of the war, and the
| German civilian losses during communist counterattack got as
| sizeable within months.
| jeromescuggs wrote:
| tl;dr
| https://twitter.com/crackconnoisser/status/14850778668492185...
| anonygler wrote:
| These bombings were almost as tragic as Japan's treatment of
| China and Korea. Luckily they hastened an end to the war and
| Japan's exit from the rest of the Asian continent, and spared
| many GI's from needing to invade the main Japanese island.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Apparently there was actually a 1000 plane raid AFTER japan had
| surrendered. https://youtu.be/SDSemU3gjSQ?t=260
| onychomys wrote:
| Wiki says that raid was the day before they surrendered. See
| the final paragraph in this section:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan#Atomic_bomb...
| drocer88 wrote:
| Chomsky is likely confused about Washington time and Tokyo
| time.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| It's a good lesson from history that if you as a nation or its
| leader decide to start a war take a good look at your people
| because you may be condemning them to death. Don't expect mercy
| from your newly made enemy.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| I just posted this in the commentary about safety of nuclear
| power in America:
|
| "Of course there's a worst one, there has to be. Well Hanford
| didn't principally produce energy, so much as just plutonium, so
| really its mission was weapon production. So now we're changing
| the subject a bit, no longer is it about electricity, but
| defense.
|
| So we can address that immediately: without the Hanford site,
| Japan would not have surrendered without an invasion of the home
| islands. Maybe not even then. It was the "new and cruel bomb," as
| the Emperor of Japan described it while citing it as the reason
| for surrender in his speech. That "new and cruel" bomb meant an
| alternative to reenacting the Battle of Iwo Jima (which I would
| describe as "fucked up" for both sides without question) a
| thousand times. Battles to the last cartridge. Forgetting
| completely about the lives of Allied and Axis soldiers, you
| realize the death toll that would have on the civilians of Japan?
| They were on the hook for all kinds of atrocities all over Asia
| and the Pacific, in the context of total war they pissed off the
| rest of the world way too hard for the Allies to declare a truce.
| Just in Korea alone, the stories are just...let's not talk about
| that, let's stick to what is fucked up within nuclear science.
|
| Japanese were subscribed to the idea that their genocide was
| preferable to surrender. So that's why the bomb, and by extension
| the Hanford site, were so important. In practice the nukes in
| Japan explosives second, fireworks first. Napalm was a much
| better explosive for the money, in terms of the destruction it
| could produce. The really bad bombings in WWII were in Tokyo and
| Dresden, a hundred thousand dead per bombing, a new climactic
| event called a "Firestorm," terrible burns, pavement getting
| goopy, high winds--I claim those bombings were worse. But they
| weren't as flamboyant as a star."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30362668
| champagnois wrote:
| Like it or not, the civillian bombings of Japan were absolutely
| necessary.
|
| Japan was a very sick and diseased nation and culture at the
| time. They had made a national, media broadcasted sport of
| beheading children. They had turned deadly human experimentation
| into science. They had waged wars of aggression on all of their
| neighbors, no matter how distant.
|
| They brought their cultural disease to American shores and
| attacked my family. All of their civillian science and industry
| and culture brought about the war machine that came to American
| shores to murder us in a time of peace, on a continent far away
| from their own.
|
| The bombings of Japan should stand as a warning to all nations
| and cultures for all generations. If your culture gets sick with
| that totalitarian ideology, it is a lot better if you fix it at
| home on your own terms than if you bring it to our shores and
| make us fix it for you.
|
| You can all enjoy the peaceful world that resulted from American
| sacrifice, and posturing after WW2. Criticize us however you
| like, you have that right and luxury regardless of where you
| live.
|
| Regardless, you would be wise to learn this one lesson from
| history: Don't start nothing, won't be nothing.
|
| Germany and Japan learned that lesson the hard way and they
| deserved every thing they got in response.
| shakezula wrote:
| This comment drips with Western arrogance and ignorance.
|
| > Like it or not, the civilian bombings of Japan were
| absolutely necessary.
|
| > Japan was a very sick and diseased nation and culture at the
| time.
|
| Citations needed.
|
| > They had turned deadly human experimentation into science.
|
| At the time periods in question, de-facto segregation was still
| the norm across the entire U.S. and yet you're implying we were
| some sort of beacon of morality and human rights. Hell, the
| U.S. was performing horrific human experimentation before and
| _after_ the war.
|
| > They brought their cultural disease to American shores
|
| This part is just straight up racism.
|
| > All of their civillian science and industry and culture
| brought about the war machine that came to American shores to
| murder us in a time of peace
|
| You're either a troll or you truly have bought into the entire
| breadth of American Propaganda.
| champagnois wrote:
| >>citations needed
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_usi.
| ..
|
| I am not on HN to confront warcrimes denialism from foreign
| extremists, so this is about the extent that I am going to
| go.
|
| >>At the time periods in question, de-facto segregation was
| still the norm across the entire U.S. and yet you're implying
| we were some sort of beacon of morality and human rights.
| Hell, the U.S. was performing horrific human experimentation
| before and _after_ the war.
|
| No where near comparable to the horrors of what Japan was
| doing and not even close to relevant to this thread. This is
| pure whataboutism from a denialist.
|
| The axis powers were not the same as the allies in some
| "weird and wacky" grey morality.
|
| >>This part is just straight up racism.
|
| No. Describing fascist cultures engaged in genocidal wars of
| extermination against the whole world as "diseased" during
| that time period is being polite and succinct. Maybe your
| view is that such a culture was healthy at the time? Tell us.
|
| >>You're either a troll or you truly have bought into the
| entire breadth of American Propaganda.
|
| I have seen the horrors of fascist Japan first hand. I have
| seen the devices and torture chambers they built. I have
| lived in Nanjing and heard the air raid sirens with my own
| ears.
|
| I, for one, am not an ignorant denialist that wants to
| pretend none of this ever happened. Fascist Japan had a
| problem back home that needed fixing. America fixed it.
| shakezula wrote:
| > I am not on HN to confront warcrimes denialism
|
| Says the warcrime denialist. You justified civilian
| bombings because you viewed them as culturally inferior.
| You are the same fascist that you are describing here.
|
| > No where near comparable to the horrors of what Japan was
| doing and not even close to relevant to this thread.
|
| Except it's absolutely relevant when you're crafting your
| rosy world view of pre-WW2 America.
|
| > Maybe your view is that such a culture was healthy at the
| time?
|
| My argument is that you can't justify civilian bombings for
| _cultural reasons_. All of the things you have stated could
| just as easily be said about America in the same century in
| question, and yet I feel you'd be opposed to your home
| being fire-bombed by the Japanese if they, I don't know,
| considered you a sick and diseased nation and culture? It
| is not whataboutism, it is a fundamental disagreement with
| your method, not the conclusion you reached.
| GuardianCaveman wrote:
| I can't help but find a sick satisfaction from this article after
| recently reading rape of Nanking and a recent pacific war book
| about Japanese rape and cannibalism of Captured US marines and a
| book about the OSS in Burma and the Japanese routinely cutting
| off penises of young boys and shoving them in their mouth as they
| lay bleeding to death while the Japanese raped and bayoneted
| young girls and the village burned.
| codechad wrote:
| My grandfather flew a B-29 in the March 10 raid. His war journal
| noted that even with his mask on (oxygen/air-filtration), he
| could still smell the burning flesh from the destruction that had
| been unleashed from bombers sequenced ahead of his group.
|
| Operation Meetinghouse[1] is/was the single most destructive
| bombing raid in human history. I really hope that record is never
| broken.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...
| golemiprague wrote:
| lmilcin wrote:
| > As many as 100,000 Japanese people were killed and another
| million injured, most of them civilians, when more than 300
| American B-29 bombers dropped 1,500 tons of firebombs on the
| Japanese capital that night.
|
| Most bomb raids during WWII did absolutely nothing. Only very
| rarely a bomb strikes a target and does any damage.
|
| Here you have an average of over 300 kills per aircraft and 60
| per bomb. Absolutely mind blowing.
| samstave wrote:
| I have always been aghast at the destruction of Japanese
| history/culture/artifacts that occured due to this...
|
| Japan is one of the most unique histories in the modern human civ
| timeline...
|
| So much was destroyed during the fire bombing of Japan that
| humanity will never get back.
|
| https://youtu.be/RceLAhPOS9Q
|
| Watch this.
| Torkel wrote:
| Hardcore History podcast, "Supernova of the East".
|
| Chances are most HN readers who upvote this story has already
| listened to this, but if there's someone who missed it... go
| listen :)
| huevosabio wrote:
| And specifically on the atomic bombing: Logical Insanity,
| https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-42-blitz-...
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Literally checking every morning for episode 7 at this
| point.... come on Dan.
| servercobra wrote:
| I'm pretty sure he said episode 6 was the finale.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Well that just ruined my day.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Pretty sure the series ends at 6.
| Rels wrote:
| I thought that the series was done? And I'm adding my
| recommandation to Hardcore History, it's a great podcast.
| cushychicken wrote:
| Malcolm Gladwell's 2020 season of Revisionist History mostly
| focused on Curtis LeMay, the development of napalm, and the
| firebombing of Tokyo.
|
| https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/the-bomber-mafia/
|
| Fascinating and horrifying.
| BasilPH wrote:
| I came here to post this, glad you already did. It's honestly
| one of the best things I've ever listened to. I find it
| amazing how he can paint such a nuanced picture of such a
| complex and horrific topic which lends itself so easily to
| taking a black-and-white view.
| tpowell wrote:
| They turned this podcast into an excellent book, and the
| audiobook gets all of the same treatments as the podcast:
|
| https://books.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-bomber-mafia-a-
| drea...
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| Seconding this recommendation. I've read a lot about World War
| 2, but this podcast was such a fresh, impactful presentation.
| Amazingly well done. And useful context for articles like this
| one.
| greg7582947 wrote:
| The article fails to mention that at this phase of the war, when
| we were trying to convince the Japanese to surrender, we were
| warning target cities of pending raids by dropping leaflets a few
| days beforehand. These leaflets advised civilians to evacuate the
| cities. Unfortunately few did, since it was unfashionable if not
| dangerous to heed such a warning in a militaristic society like
| Japan was at the time. Still, we put our bomber crews in danger
| to reduce the number of civilian casualties while bringing the
| war to an end.
| onychomys wrote:
| It's totally bonkers that the Japanese leadership didn't
| surrender after this raid. Or at least after the next ones that
| showed that the US could do it basically at will anywhere in
| Japan. I just will never understand how they could sit around and
| watch their citizens burn and continue to fight. Think of how
| many Japanese lives they could have saved if they'd surrendered
| in June instead of August.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| A quote from Mitsuo Fuchida, a Pearl Harbor attack pilot:
|
| "You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at
| that time, how fanatic they were, they'd die for the Emperor
| ... Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that
| invasion with sticks and stones if necessary ... Can you
| imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would
| have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that
| than the American public will ever know."
| fatbird wrote:
| At the time the bombs were dropped in August 1945, there were
| also 900,000 veteran Japanese soldiers on the Home Islands.
| Even if the civilians didn't pick up sticks and stones, the
| Japanese death toll would almost certainly include that
| number.
| user-the-name wrote:
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| We're all just fleas on the backs of wolves.
| syki wrote:
| We can go back and forth and quibble over using the word
| "murder" as you have and quibble over who ultimately is to
| blame. I won't convince you of anything and likewise you
| won't convince me of anything. War truly is hell and after
| the way the Japanese conducted themselves during the war
| there's a certain karma involved in terms of them getting the
| total war they so desired.
|
| War sucks. My dad fought in World War 2. Frontline soldier in
| Western Europe in Patton's Third Army. His battalion war book
| has the names of the dead and many are underlined in red
| because those are the ones he knew. He was a drunk and
| abusive and obviously suffered from untreated PTSD.
|
| His division was preparing to transfer to the Pacific when
| the atomic bombs were dropped. He appreciated that as a
| result the Japanese surrendered (at least it appeared to be a
| causal effect from his perspective). Who can possibly
| calculate the efficacy of the alternatives even in
| retrospect? It's easy to criticize after the fact. Are you so
| certain you'd have decided differently than Curtis LeMay were
| you in his position?
| user-the-name wrote:
| I am not necessarily saying the choice was wrong. It was
| one bad option out of many.
|
| However, I _am_ challenging the incredibly strong urge
| people have to absolve those who made the choice of any
| kind of responsibility for having made it. You will see it
| even in the responses to this comment. We absolutely refuse
| to even acknowledge that a choice was, in fact, made to
| kill all of these innocent civilians.
|
| The person I responded to is struggling to understand how
| the Japanese reacted to this. But he is paying absolute
| zero mind to the actions and reactions of those on his own
| side, who chose to bring this tragedy about.
|
| The very idea of thinking about the acts committed by your
| own side is strongly, strongly taboo.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| While it is true that many will absolve the decision
| makers without thinking, or with thoughts of revenge, a
| deeper analysis shows that it was a reasonable decision.
| You write them off as "strongly, strongly taboo". Is that
| as far as that goes then? Wasn't everything, starting
| with Pearl Harbor, strongly, strongly taboo? Is it ok to
| murder someone just because they are in a uniform,
| because two humans, who we will call "kings", or
| "emperors", or "presidents" have a disagreements? Bottom
| line you're walking into a moral discussion about war
| with the idea "killing is bad". Think you need to up your
| game.
| nradov wrote:
| I absolve those who made the choice of any kind of
| responsibility for protecting enemy civilians. Their
| _only_ responsibility was towards Americans. If their
| choice saved even one American life then in context it
| was the right choice. How could they possibly ask
| Americans to contine dying if they had the means to
| shorten the war?
| user-the-name wrote:
| panick21_ wrote:
| I don't think anybody denies this choice was made. Of
| course it was.
|
| They made it earlier in the war. Civilians were the war
| economy and civilians were legit targets for all nations
| in war.
|
| Civilians in a total war are just not typical civilians.
| Everybody in society was mobilized for war.
|
| > The very idea of thinking about the acts committed by
| your own side is strongly, strongly taboo.
|
| No it isn't. Lots of historians work on that. There are
| lots of talks about it in places like WW2 History Museum
| and so on.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _Civilians were the war economy and civilians were
| legit targets for all nations in war._
|
| That's not what the Geneva Conventions says.
| panick21_ wrote:
| The Geneva Conventions from 1949?
|
| Before there there was Hague Conventions of 1899 and
| 1907. Those were violated in WW1 on a large scale and no
| alternative had been put into place.
|
| All these things are good and nice, but the reality is,
| if disagreeing with these is vital to win a war,
| literally no nation followed them.
|
| Those kinds of agreements are good attempts in peace time
| to improve the chance of good outcomes, but in reality,
| in major global they are just pieces of papers that can
| not be enforced.
|
| If you want to run around and simply say everybody is
| evil, then you can do that. But if you actually put
| yourself in the position of those people and try to make
| decisions if you want to be critical, explain what and
| how you would have done things differently.
|
| And what cost would you have been willing to engage in to
| achieve that moral high ground.
| onychomys wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I didn't actually pass any judgement one way
| or the other on the actions of the US military in that post.
| The two are morally separate, we don't have to do a what-
| about-ism for it.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Indeed you didn't. But you jumped immediately very strongly
| to one question, rather than to another. You have been
| conditioned all your life to question the decisions of the
| enemy, but to never, ever question the decisions of your
| own side.
| onychomys wrote:
| Or maybe I was making a conscious choice to comment on
| the one but not the other. In the last 20 years or so,
| there's been a wide reconsideration about the morality of
| dropping bombs (whether nuclear or conventional) on
| civilian populations during the war. I don't think we
| need to have yet another conversation about that.
| Instead, I'm trying to understand the Japanese viewpoint,
| where they get a telegram that 100k people have been
| killed in a raid and think "Bummer, but we fight on!".
| user-the-name wrote:
| _Has_ there really been "wide reconsideration" of that?
|
| Or do we like to pretend there has, and that's all done
| now, but still treat the subject as taboo and avoid it?
| mc32 wrote:
| When you're in the middle of a hard fought war you do not
| have the certainty afforded by history. Everything is at
| stake. You may think you're ahead but then you suffer
| unthinkable losses (the battle of the bulge, for example
| --for both sides and the Korean war). With large scale wars
| where both sides both have a chance at winning, it's not over
| till it's over. You have no idea what will happen you cannot
| afford to say, "I think we'll win, let's pull back". Your
| fleet can be sunk, your ally can fall unpredictably
| (leadership death), etc.
|
| You also have to remember, the Axis Japanese were extremely
| brutal in war. The allies could not afford to think, "maybe
| they'll turn nice".
| DiffEq wrote:
| This is a good questions and deserves an answer. The decision
| to murder one hundred thousand human beings was made not by
| the leadership of the United States but by the Japanese
| Imperial command when they decided to start and continue the
| war. So the blood of these people is on the hands of the
| Japanese Imperial Command and none else.
|
| This is also the case when a murderer is put to death for
| their crime. The murderer is responsible for the person he
| killed and his own death; the state who put him to death is
| not responsible for his murder.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Absolutely not. Every person involved made a choice, of
| their own free will. You do not get to absolve the ones you
| like of responsibility and instead put it all on those who
| you do not.
|
| Choices were made. They had consequences.
| DiffEq wrote:
| Are you saying that U.S. leadership is responsible for
| the murders of those that were killed in the strategic
| bombing of Japan? If you are - then you are wrong.
| eschulz wrote:
| You're right since this not only killed many thousands but
| demonstrated that the US was completely capable in destroying
| any Japanese city at their whim. Sure rearming and maintaining
| aircraft can take days, but at this point the Japanese military
| played no part in defending their cities, and it was just all
| up to US decision making whether to continue to quick
| destruction of Japanese municipalities.
|
| I think the saga of the Japanese leadership considering
| surrender is fascinating. Obviously everything will be
| destroyed pretty soon without capitulation, but it's clear that
| the leadership had a difficult time admitting that their
| decades of confidence in the Japanese military's destiny were
| wrong.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Did they think at the time that their people would suffer more
| under occupation than they would trying to continue to fight?
|
| (Actual question, not rhetorical.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Happiness utilitarianism is so pervasive today that people
| forget alternatives even exist, but there are a wide array of
| value systems.
|
| For at least some, the suffering was irrelevant. Many held
| that it would be better for every Japanese person to die than
| loose the war.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| dairylee wrote:
| The Japanese Government didn't want an unconditional
| surrender as it would have meant the Emperor (Who was seen as
| quasi-divine) would have potentially been tried for war
| crimes and executed.
|
| They didn't care about their citizens, just the Emperor.
|
| Fantastic video which explains everything:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCRTgtpC-Go
| CPLX wrote:
| If the Japanese had done it to New York City would you have
| surrendered?
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| If faced with massive destruction and extremely high
| anticipated civilian casualties with absolutely no hope of
| victory...yes, surrender is totally rational
|
| Once the US took Guam, the war was over (Guam was close
| enough to Japan to enable the US to enact a campaign of
| unlimited bombing). From that point forward, continued
| conflict was a matter of Japanese leaders sacrificing their
| own citizens for absolutely no gain
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Rationality and gain are relative to one's goals and
| values.
| mynameishere wrote:
| If the probability of success was zero, perhaps. But then the
| probability of success was zero after Pearl Harbor so perhaps
| not.
| Someone wrote:
| I think all historians agree a US victory was almost
| certain, if not dead certain after Pearl Harbor. That
| attack didn't destroy enough of the US fleet to buy the
| Japanese time to trie and get even with the USA in
| production capacity.
|
| Even the Japanese military knew that at the time. https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Strateg...:
|
| _Admiral Hara Tadaichi summed up the Japanese result by
| saying, "We won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbor
| and thereby lost the war."_
| InTheArena wrote:
| The problem with this line of thought is that it's
| basically ignores the historical exemplar that Japan used
| to justify their actions in the first place - the Sino-
| Ruso war. Russia was a juggernaut compared to Japan, but
| two catastrophic attacks - one surprised removed all
| support for the war from Japan, and the Czar gave in and
| ended the war.
|
| Historians are arguing that in a industrialized conflict,
| where the United States was committed to war, Japan had
| no shot at winning. And to some degree that's true. But
| it depended on political factors that were no means set
| in stone.
|
| But was America truly that dedicated to war with Japan?
| Turns out yes - but it's not hard to see a world where
| Japan wasn't quite a closely allied to Germany and/or
| Midway had gone the other way, or after millions where
| dead in the home island where that commitment would be
| tested.
|
| Or conversely - as Hitler hoped - Japan would hold off
| America just long enough for the Russians to be finished
| off by the Germans in the East and Britain would finally
| come to the table. In a "Germany First" Strategy, America
| could not have taken the offensive in 1942 in that
| scenario.
|
| But it's also reflective of the dehumanization that
| Japan's leadership as - the West was soft, just as the
| Russians were soft, and Japan's greater fighting spirit
| would carry the day.
|
| Pearl Harbor didn't predetermine history.
| sofixa wrote:
| Especially considering Midway was _so_ close, even with
| the gigantic advantages the US Navy has ( intelligence so
| they basically knew what the Japanese were doing, in what
| order and where, and radars).
| sofixa wrote:
| They knew it before that as well:
|
| > In the first six to twelve months of a war with the
| United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win
| victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues
| after that, I have no expectation of success.
|
| Isoruku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Japanese
| Navy.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If they went on to do it to several other cities,
| demonstrating total control of the airspace and the ability
| to wipe any city of their choosing off the map overnight, and
| it was after years of losing battles... probably.
| omot wrote:
| I'm not sure. Even then, knowing Japanese atrocities in all
| of Asia, it's probably better to just keep fighting to the
| death as opposed to being subject to slavery, rape, or
| human experiments.
|
| I'm sure a part of the reason the Japanese refused
| surrender was because their reflection in the mirror was
| not pretty.
| TomK32 wrote:
| The Japanese tried firebombing the West Coast.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
| mc32 wrote:
| I think you're kind of pointing to the London V-II raids. If
| Germany had had the production, London would have had to
| surrender. Luckily their initial V-1 bombs were not very
| accurate and their V-IIs were slow to ramp up, so that bought
| lots of time.
|
| We have more land, so I think we could have dispersed the
| population to the country to make the bombs or raids less
| effective. But at some threshold you do have to give up and
| fight another day.
| panick21_ wrote:
| No they would not have. V2 raids are very ineffective and
| basically didn't effect the population much at all. Its
| just out of a blue sometimes a building explodes.
|
| 99% of those bombs don't hit anything relevant for the war
| effort.
|
| At the same time production of those rockets was far more
| costly then whatever they hit in Britain.
|
| And sure, if they could magically have no limits then
| maybe. But in practice, Germany had mass starvation while
| huge amounts of bio-mass was converted into rocket fuel.
| Not to mention very inefficient uses other materials.
|
| Even ignoring all that, the total payload deployed by
| German over Britain was laughably small compared to allied
| bombing raids.
| CPLX wrote:
| I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that
| England would not have surrendered if every single blade of
| grass and tree stump on the island had been reduced to
| smoking ash.
|
| Arguable, clearly. But plausible.
| mc32 wrote:
| If it were up to Churchill, probably but I don't think
| the military leadership would have followed all the way
| there. At some point, you have to be pragmatic. Yet, in
| this case, Germany would be thirsty for revenge (given
| the name of the V-II rockets), so that makes the calculus
| more difficult --on the other hand you had a Vichy
| France, so who knows.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A separate English peace would have made a lot of sense.
|
| Hitler had no interest in expanding westward. His plan
| was a great German empire where the Volga would be what
| the Mississippi is in the US. If France & Britain had not
| attacked, Germany would very likely have left them alone.
|
| In the east, it was a fight to the death, and both sides
| knew it. If the Russians surrendered, they faced
| extinction.
| pintxo wrote:
| Yes, Hitler was mainly interested in moving expanding
| eastward. But he was intelligent enough to see that the
| (declining but still) empires of France and Britain would
| not have allowed this to happen. Thus his initial attack
| westward to neutralize this threat to his eastward
| expansion plans. It's a tragedy, that Stalin secured this
| westward move by signing the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939,
| basically neutralizing the east while Hitler would sweep
| the west. We will never know what would have happened if
| Hitler had adversaries on both fronts from the beginning.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I mean, when France and Britain declared war 2 days after
| the invasion of Poland, you didn't need much intelligence
| to see where things were going.
| Loughla wrote:
| >We will never know what would have happened if Hitler
| had adversaries on both fronts from the beginning.
|
| This is just one point among hundreds in this thread that
| I find fascinating for the same reason.
|
| So many people here know exactly what they would've and
| what we should've done back then. Because we have the
| benefit of nearly a hundred years of analysis and
| hindsight.
|
| Most of the disagreements here aren't actually about what
| happened, and why, but what the people in this thread
| would've done and why.
|
| I find that fascinating.
| mc32 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| They're basically the equivalent of "Ha! If I were
| Yamamoto, I would have...." because they know what
| happened and when and what would have turned events. But
| had they been in Yamamoto's (or Nimitz's or Patton's, or
| Rommel's) position, would have made much worse decisions.
| As you say they have complete benefit of decades of study
| of the war and tactics as well as limitations we are
| privileged to know only after the war.
| fatbird wrote:
| Japan was run by the Emperor and a six person cabinet; the
| military held half the cabinet seats. The Emperor didn't rule
| the cabinet, and thus the country; the group governed by
| internal consensus.
|
| Even after the atomic bombs were dropped, the military half of
| the cabinet would not accept unconditional surrender; the
| Emperor and civilian half would have accepted surrender much
| earlier, but feared the military would simply seize control, as
| had happened many times before in Japanese history. And even
| after the Emperor forced the decision in cabinet to accept
| surrender, there was an attempted coup by parts of the
| military.
|
| Japanese obstinacy was driven mainly by a kind of hybrid
| fascist/bushido doctrine that dominated the Japanese military
| starting in the 20s.
| Nabati wrote:
| It's totally bonkers that soldiers are alright with killing
| hundreds of thousands of people and destroying whole cities
| without even flinching.
| retrac wrote:
| You had a 67% chance of being killed on your first tour with
| British Bomber Command, rising to 85% after two tours. Were
| the airmen "alright" with that statistic too, when they were
| forced into a cockpit? There wasn't much of a choice in the
| matter for the average soldier on the ground (or in the air)
| on any side in that great conflict. Most of them were
| conscripts and desertion potentially carried the death
| penalty even on the Allied side. That loss of individual
| agency is part of the war's many horrors; whether you were
| alright with it or not was quite irrelevant.
|
| It's worth noting psychiatric casualties for bomber crews,
| for the Allies at least, were sky-high with about a quarter
| of those not killed in combat being discharged for mental
| breakdowns. Whether that rate of breakdown is from the
| extreme risk, or from sometimes coming back smelling like
| burning flesh, is up for debate.
| InTheArena wrote:
| And then take Japanese soldiers, where that wasn't a 67%
| change, it was 100% that you would eventually get
| conscripted into a Banzai charge, or a Kamikazi brigade, or
| given a bamboo spike, and told to hold the Americans at
| bay.
|
| We really do a disservice when we try to take WWII and put
| it into a modern relativistic historical analysis. The
| scope of evil and sacrifice here is completely different
| from our western conception of War as a video game where
| kids fly drones and random pixels die.
| bonsoir wrote:
| The US was asking for surrendering without conditions. That was
| the part that was debated by Japanese internaly, it's all
| documented. Remember, their Emperor was considered to be a God.
| Put yourself in their shoe, what would be consequences for the
| population to have the US potentially trial and give death
| penalty to their Emperor ? Would it still be Japan? (keep in
| mind, people were brainwashed). In the end, even the US decided
| that keeping the Emperor in place was for the best, however the
| Japanese had no way to know beforehand, because the US wouldn't
| give guarentee.
| mc32 wrote:
| War can be like a freight train. It's hard to stop on a dime
| --especially when the population has been completely sucked
| into the effort through religion (emperor-god) and additional
| propaganda. Just about all the civilian population was directly
| or indirectly supporting the war effort. It's hard to over-
| state how wrapped up in the war effort he whole nation was.
|
| It was untenable to just quit. Of course there we some seasoned
| military figures who knew better, but just like us, when our
| generals warn against war (Iraq invasion for example) when the
| wheels are set in motion, there is little stopping it.)
|
| Germany as well. The war was over way before Berlin
| capitulated.
| adolph wrote:
| > War can be like a freight train. It's hard to stop on a
| dime --especially when the population has been completely
| sucked into the effort through religion (emperor-god) and
| additional propaganda.
|
| Case in point:
|
| _After Japan officially surrendered in August 1945, Japanese
| holdouts in Southeast Asian countries and Pacific islands
| that had been part of the Japanese empire continued to fight
| local police, government forces, and American and British
| forces stationed to assist the newly formed governments. Many
| holdouts were discovered in Southeast Asia and the Pacific
| Islands over the following decades, with the last verified
| holdout, Private Teruo Nakamura, surrendering on Morotai
| Island in Indonesia in December 1974._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout
| jacquesm wrote:
| Brainwashing is a powerful thing. Make sure it never
| happens to you.
| nradov wrote:
| The civilian population had no control and their religious
| beliefs were irrelevant to policy. The emperor and the top
| military leaders could have just quit at any time. I
| understand why they didn't want to quit, but they always had
| that option.
| mc32 wrote:
| With decades under their belt trouncing and prancing around
| the East and having their way, marauding, pillaging,
| raping, burning, invading, etc., it was unthinkable for
| most in their military leadership (as well as civilians)
| that they could be defeated on their "home islands". (You
| know, previous war doctrines and all). It was unfathomable.
|
| I do think their religious beliefs were relevant to policy.
| The US was very cognizant of this when they demanded the
| unconditional surrender of Japan.
| numpad0 wrote:
| > The emperor and the top military leaders could have just
| quit at any time.
|
| And trigger an immediate army coup to secure the Emperor
| and destroy defeat acceptance recordings. That happened.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It was war from the top led by the far-right. A great video
| about how Japan went from a democracy to an ultra-nationalist
| war-hawk government. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voo0CpPcE0c
| petermcneeley wrote:
| If I know the history correct Japan actually did get
| conditional surrender. The USA wanted unconditional surrender
| which the never got despite dropping 2 atom bombs on cities
| which were not really military targets.
| trothamel wrote:
| "We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied
| Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of
| all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under the
| Japanese control wherever situated."
|
| That's a quote from the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Japan wanted to keep the emperor of japan this is why they
| wouldnt unconditionally surrender. I was under the
| impression that they got to keep the emperor thus it was
| not an unconditional surrender.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They agreed to unconditional surrender and then got to
| keep the Emperor. Which makes one wonder if the US had
| actually offered surrender terms that included keeping
| the Emperor maybe Japan would have surrendered. Instead
| they just demanded unconditional surrender.
| weeblewobble wrote:
| The official Postdam Declaration (allied surrender terms)
| didn't mention imperial sovereignty one way or the other,
| but it appears the Emperor considered it to have been
| agreed upon prior to the "unconditional" surrender
|
| Some more color, from Wikipedia:
|
| "The Japanese cabinet considered the Allied response, and
| Suzuki argued that they must reject it and insist on an
| explicit guarantee for the imperial system. Anami
| returned to his position that there be no occupation of
| Japan. Afterward, Togo told Suzuki that there was no hope
| of getting better terms, and Kido conveyed the Emperor's
| will that Japan surrender. [...]
|
| That day, Hirohito informed the imperial family of his
| decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka,
| then asked whether the war would be continued if the
| kokutai (imperial sovereignty) could not be preserved.
| The Emperor simply replied "of course.""
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| As with almost everything there are countless reasons why
| Japan didn't surrender earlier. [1] By June of 1945
| Japan's leaders did want out of the war, but were still
| hoping for a surrender that allowed them to keep much of
| their holdings (I think people often forget how much of
| East Asia Japan had solidly controlled for almost 10
| years at this point). And they were being strung along by
| the Soviet union who was supposed to mediate peace, yet
| had their own motives to prolong the war until they could
| join.
|
| And even after dropping 2 nukes, and believing the US had
| 100 more, it took days more, and some additional attacks,
| to convince Japan to surrender. And even after all this,
| there was a serious attempted coup.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#:~
| :text=T....
| Retric wrote:
| Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese
| military with 40,000 soldiers in the city roughly 1/2 where
| killed by the atomic bomb where closer to 1/4 of the civilian
| population was killed. It also supported a large war
| industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for
| bombs, rifles, and handguns.
|
| By WWII's _low_ standards that was very much a military
| target. In comparison Japan tried using unguided balloons to
| bomb the US which while completely ineffective targeted
| everyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Japanese leadership believed (not without reason) that they
| could make the cost of invading Japan so incredibly
| catastrophic in American blood that the decadent, racially and
| culturally inferior United States would not pay it.
|
| People forget but the bloodiest days of WW2 where not in the
| insanely large battles where the Hitler regime was defeated,
| but rather in the last months when obvious defeat was years
| earlier for the Nazis - and where where Eastern Europe was
| devastated between the Germans the Soviets. The flow of blood
| was unimaginable.
|
| I personally would hope that would have been the case that the
| USA not invade, as the intelligence started to show that the
| two-stage Americans invasion plans for the Japanese home
| islands badly underestimated the Japanese. Washington was
| already concerned about the cost, but we know now that these
| estimates where off by almost 50%.
|
| They still had options, even without the Atomic bombs. That
| alternative would have been a starvation blockade. Given the
| complete collapse of the Japanese economy, the complete
| inability to import food, that blockade would have made what
| occurred in WWI with Britain blockading Germany, or the earlier
| famines in Bangladesh, or even the systematic starvation
| program that the Bolsheviks unleashed in the Ukraine (The
| Holodomor) look like Child's play.
|
| Edit - honestly curious why people are downvoting this?
| panick21_ wrote:
| People might down vote because they are uninformed.
|
| Once you seriously look into Japan plans for suicide attacks
| on massive scales would have been very costly. They were
| doing series effort in transformed their air-force and navy
| into suicide attack armed forces.
|
| And these suicide attacks are not crazy, they were well plant
| and well executed attacks designed inflict massive costly
| attrition on the US.
|
| Think about literally 10000s of well planned and executed
| suicide plans and suicide submarines attacks, army willing to
| suffer mass sacrifice.
|
| And the fact is, the US did not have any solution for these
| suicide wave attacks. They were literally designed to work
| around US air defense patterns, and by the end of the war,
| the US had not figured out how to decisively defeated these
| attacks.
|
| Landing 100000s of troupes in Japan against massive waves of
| suicide plans would have been insane.
|
| > the systematic starvation program that the Bolsheviks
| unleashed in the Ukraine (The Holodomor)
|
| Just FYI, it was not a systematic starvation program, it was
| a systematic food export program. And it was not target at
| Ukraine, but was applied in much the same way all over the
| Soviet Union.
|
| I know there are some books that push the ethnic angle (and
| doing so is very popular particularly now), but its pretty
| clear from the top level documents and policies that it
| wasn't some form of ethnic warfare.
|
| It was do whatever you need to export food so you can buy
| machines from the West.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I think less of an export issue but mass collectivization
| all across USSR. My g-grandfather was sent to Siberia in
| 1932 for refusing to give up his cow to collective farm.
| That's one good farmer family less to produce. Now multiply
| it by one million and you get a famine on unimaginable
| scale.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Sure, the reason they did the collectivization beyond the
| ideology is so they could then control that production
| and channel it towards the uses they desired.
|
| Total production was expected to go down. The regime was
| very well aware of that. But their control over that
| production was increased exponentially.
|
| And considering the industrialization, a lot of that went
| into exports where it was exchanged for industrial goods.
|
| Sorry for your g-grandfather, must have been a horrible
| time. Its insane that back then they considered anybody a
| 'wealthy farmer' who had like 1-2 cows.
| InTheArena wrote:
| It's fair to note that this is contentious - I would just
| point that the most recent scholarship has focused on (not
| surprisingly) Stalin's point of view with the Ukraine (and
| he absolutely did view it as a systematic way to weaken the
| Kulak's and the Ukraine), and Historians seem to now be
| generally viewing it as a genocide. That's not universal,
| but certainly the way that the scholarship (at the moment)
| is trending.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I do not venture in what is and isn't genocide. The legal
| definition and common use and so on. I don't know.
|
| My point is that it is not primarily target towards
| ethnicity. It was certainty targeted towards Kulak's and
| of course, Ukraine had a productive land and thus a fair
| number of 'Kulaks'. The typical translation that is most
| often repeated in Stalin writing and the 'party line' was
| 'taking a class approach'.
|
| What I dislike is the Ukrainian nationalist attempt to
| own the history. The same policy hit other ethnic groups
| just as hard. The Kazakh population was probably more
| effected in terms of %.
|
| A huge amount of ethnically Russian farmer died as well,
| and they often get no mention in discussions of this.
|
| I has become fashionable to portray it as a Ukrainian
| tragedy, rather then a Eurasian tragedy. It effect people
| between Moldova, Omsk and Arkhangelsk and beyond.
|
| The most powerful version of that is Red Famine by Anne
| Applebaum. And that book as a pretty clear focus on
| Ukraine and a political message for the current situation
| for Western audiences. Ukrainian nationalism has been
| trying to use the Holodomor in the same way Israel does
| with the Holocaust, it gives it the permenent victim role
| and the moral high ground. She her self of course is a
| political commentator on those matters and her husband is
| politically active in trying to pull Ukraine into Europe.
| While here book does pay some small amount of attention
| to the other aspect and other victims, the overwhelming
| message is about Ukrainians suffering and overcoming
| basically intentional attempts at destruction of Ukraine
| and that is what the conversation around the book has
| universally focused on those aspects.
|
| Steven Kotkin biography of Stalin that just came out
| spent a lot time at looking at the Presidential archives,
| meaning the archives of actual stuff on Stalin desk. With
| Stalin writing on it. Very often Stalin notes his
| responses directly on the reports he gets. And the
| overwhelming focus on that is showing how Stalin had on
| his desk lots of reports of starvation from all over the
| Soviet Union, his response a lot of focus getting his
| party to hit requisition quotas and that the reports
| about starvation were exaggerated or excuses by
| functionaries for failing to hit quotas. Very little is
| about 'lets plan a mass starvation because we are afraid
| of Ukrainian nationalism'. The overwhelming focus is on
| building and wielding a governmental machine to impose a
| new state dominate economic system on everybody, no
| matter the cost.
|
| I have certainty not done an exhaustive study of all
| books and paper published on this topic in the last
| decade so your overall characterization of the debate
| might be accurate.
|
| The term 'systematic starvation' implies that starvation
| was the goal. This is not the case in my opinion. The
| Soviet certainty expected economic disruption and people
| like Alexei Rykov (2nd most powerful guy in the Soviet
| Union) opposed the collectivization on those grounds.
| However even in Rykov worst prediction fell well short of
| what was actually required to push this all the way to
| the end. Their reports don't say 'great success, mass
| starvation achieved', they actually believed their own
| propaganda about how collective farms would be far more
| efficient and so on.
|
| The difference seem to me that Soviets are willing to
| tolerate starvation to achieve their goals, not that they
| deliberately engineered starvation to achieve their
| goals. And their primary goals were not targeting
| Ukrainian nationalism.
|
| All in all, its a difficult topic and has been used as a
| political weapon before it even started so its of course
| a minefield.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Just FYI, it was not a systematic starvation program, it
| was a systematic food export program. And it was not target
| at Ukraine, but was applied in much the same way all over
| the Soviet Union.
|
| Food production was initially fine. After USSR central
| planning shenanigans shaking things up production was less.
| Those crops were then allocated away from Ukraine because
| they were last in line to be fed and first in line to
| starve for political reasons.
|
| Whether that constitutes "systemic starvation" or just
| "normal starvation" is pretty much an exercise in taxonomy
| because the fact of the matter is that intentional
| decisions by the people in charge are what lead to the
| problem.
| panick21_ wrote:
| What matter to the top people at the government was not
| total production, but rather total share of production
| controlled by the government. They didn't not care if
| total production went down.
|
| > intentional decisions by the people in charge are what
| lead to the problem
|
| And I am not denying that. What I am arguing against is
| the claim that this was ethnic derived warfare target at
| destroying Ukrainian nationalism. That is the story often
| told today.
|
| Stalin certainty was engaged in class warfare ('taking a
| class approach' is the common translation used from his
| writings) and many different cultures and ethnicity were
| hit. Kazakhs, Ukrainians and lets not remember the many
| Russian victims too, and of course many more.
|
| Their fundamental driver was getting the resources need
| for spending on industrialization.
| vkou wrote:
| > The Japanese leadership believed (not without reason) that
| they could make the cost of invading Japan so incredibly
| catastrophic in American blood that the decadent, racially
| and culturally inferior United States would not pay it.
|
| They also forgot that right on the other side of a small
| channel was the world's largest army that was willing to pay
| it. The US has a total of 160,000 dead in the entirety of the
| Pacific war. That was a _week_ of active fighting on the
| Eastern front.
|
| To their credit, they didn't actually forget, they were
| simply hoping that the USSR would keep it's word and not
| break their non-aggression pact. It didn't, though, and
| overran Japan's continental holdings in a matter of days.
|
| Losing Manchuria was huge in bringing Japan to the
| negotiating table.
| InTheArena wrote:
| The Kwangtung army had been stripped to the bone, and then
| the Japanese has built up the army with underfed
| conscripts. They were faced with a army that didn't think a
| thing of spending lives or even being economical about the
| lives they spent, due to years of radicalization on the
| western front.
|
| That said, this point is usually very overblown by cold-war
| theorists. It was a factor, but not the Factor. The Atomic
| bomb was the critical factor in Hirohito's thinking and
| Kids in particular - and the imperial court is what forced
| the end of the war. Supposedly the Army was more concerned
| about the Russians, but the Army never cared about Japanese
| civilians anyways - and their concern went so far that
| leadership cliques in the Army tried to overthrow Hirohito.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Not to mention that the USSR had already taken several of
| Japan's northern islands, which are still held by Russia
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuril_Islands_dispute
| duxup wrote:
| It seemed to me there was a sort of victory or death kind of
| dynamic.
|
| If you think of defeat like death, then surrendering means you
| die sooner. Military leadership and civilian suicides in the
| face of defeat were not uncommon.
|
| In the meantime I don't think Japan allowed for many different
| points of view on the topic and even expressing it might be
| risky / the same result.
| jleyank wrote:
| The number of people estimated to be killed in the two invasions
| of Japan > the number of people killed in the atomic bombings.
| Worst-case predictions were O(million casualties). As was point
| out, the firebombing of Tokyo did more damage and killed more
| people but was less "efficient".
|
| The Navy's option was to mine the harbours and blow up the trains
| and let them all starve. Not the quickest but possibly the
| harshest.
|
| The problem was war weariness and a desire to play with the toy
| and to show it off to others. I don't have a good feeling as to
| the actual levels of these three positions because I don't favour
| political history but they were real concerns. They had already
| used bomb them back into the stone age to little effect.
|
| Yeah, maybe it would have been sufficient to add "and you can
| keep the Emperor as a symbol of Japan" but the behaviour in the
| war in the pacific was far from civil.
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