[HN Gopher] The Third Atomic Bomb
___________________________________________________________________
The Third Atomic Bomb
Author : dxs
Score : 98 points
Date : 2024-08-07 21:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lflank.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lflank.wordpress.com)
| mannyv wrote:
| Just started a book on the American Occupation (Architects of
| Occupation). It's interesting realize that the US at one point
| was able to rebuild a society from the ground up. They took the
| lessons from Versailles and made a peace (and society) that
| lasted for a surprisingly long time.
|
| That success in Japan and Europe probably emboldened the B team,
| who went on to handle regime change in Central/South America, the
| Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
|
| That's the difference between reading the book and reading the
| cliff notes, presumably.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Eisenhower and the Dulles Brothers weren't interested in nation
| building, they were intent on countering the Soviet Union's
| meddling and/or preserving USA business interests.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| > They took the lessons from Versailles
|
| what lessons? The Allies didn't occupy Germany at all. Germany
| would have resumed the war if that was what the Versailles
| conference came up with, and the Allies had no stomach for more
| war.
| FredPret wrote:
| But isn't that the lesson?
|
| Occupy while you rebuild?
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| No, the lesson was to demand unconditional surrender. That
| was just not in the cards for WW I. Russia had already
| dropped out.
| bumby wrote:
| It's of course up for debate, but one of the general
| assessments is that the resentment caused by the Treaty
| of Versailles gave fertile ground for the rise of the
| Nazi party. It's hard to see how unconditional surrender
| would have made the treaty more palatable to Germans
| rather than less.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what lessons? The Allies didn 't occupy Germany at all_
|
| Of course we did [1]. The ACC was far more intrusive than the
| American occupation of Japan; we formally stripped Germany of
| its sovereignty.
|
| EDIT: the lesson from Versailles was that we had to rebuild
| Germany. To rebuild required occupation. Occupying Germany
| after WWII was one of the lessons learned from Versailles.
|
| > _Germany would have resumed the war_
|
| Germany was in no position to keep fighting.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied-occupied_Germany
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| The Treaty of Versailles[1] was the treaty that ended World
| War I, not World War II
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Oh, I see what happened.
|
| OP said we learned from Versailles. That's why we
| occupied Germany after WWII: to rebuild it.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| The comment you're replying to is about the Versailles
| conference after WW1, but your link is about WW2.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| so that's three of us who noticed that.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| your link and comments are about WW II. Versailles was the
| treaty that ended WW I.
|
| > Germany was in no position to keep fighting.
|
| No one was in 1918 and everyone was exhausted, but
| "defending the homeland" is a more powerful motivator than
| anything the Allies had. Germany asked for an Armistice "on
| the basis of the 14 Points" which did not include
| occupation.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _No one was in 1918 and everyone was exhausted_ [...]
|
| The US had just entered the war after the Zimmerman
| telegram, and so Allied powers had more man power and
| more industrial strength. The Central powers were the
| ones that were exhausted, especially after the Hundred
| Days Offensive.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| The US had lost 116,000 dead. They were hardly raring to
| go.
|
| The British and French were equally exhausted. Their
| casualties combined were about the same as Germany's:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
|
| You're right that Germany was whipped, but the
| persistence of the "stab in the back" theory in the 20's
| and 30's demonstrated that they hadn't quite internalized
| that. After all, they hadn't been invaded, and "news"
| back then was so heavily censored that the Germans didn't
| all know the real situation.
| verbify wrote:
| I think the person you are replying to meant that the
| allies didn't occupy Germany after WWI (and therefore there
| could be few lessons from Versailles on nation building),
| your link posts to WWII.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| They were all exhausted. US troops had been sent home. If
| Germany had said, "Nope, not signing that" results would
| have been unpredictable. But meekly submitting was
| unlikely.
| harry8 wrote:
| Versaille treaty consequences were predictable, predicted and
| WW2 did in fact occur one generation later.
|
| https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/keynes-the-economic-conse...
| csomar wrote:
| Japan and Germany success post-war were not due to US
| occupation but in spite of it. Both were pretty industrialized
| nations before the war and had highly skilled population. Their
| success afterward was a continuation of their previous trend
| but under a different regime.
| bell-cot wrote:
| This, pretty much. Both the Germans and Japanese knew, in
| exhaustive detail, how to build and run a modern industrial
| country. And given the obvious alternative (sheltering in
| bombed-out smoking ruins, more-or-less) they very quickly
| decided to Do Whatever It Took to regain their former
| standards of living.
| cgh wrote:
| That is deeply disingenuous. The Marshall Plan transferred
| massive aid and hugely sped up reconstruction in Europe:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
|
| 'The Marshall Plan made it possible for West Germany to
| return quickly to its traditional pattern of industrial
| production with a strong export sector. Without the plan,
| agriculture would have played a larger role in the recovery
| period, which itself would have been longer. With respect to
| Austria, Gunter Bischof has noted that "the Austrian economy,
| injected with an overabundance of European Recovery Program
| funds, produced "miracle" growth figures that matched and at
| times surpassed the German ones."'
|
| Aid to Japan was similarly crucial and amounted to billions
| of dollars. These payments were separate from the Marshall
| Plan, which focused on Europe. Pre-war Japan was not a free
| market economy and subsequently underwent massive reform.
|
| Honestly, I get that it's cool to bash on the US (I am not
| American) but give credit where it's due. US-led post-war
| reconstruction was of enormous and lasting significance.
| Maxatar wrote:
| That argument is plausible if not for the fact that East
| Germany was pretty destitute compared to West Germany.
| cdavid wrote:
| It is true both countries were already industrious, but it
| was far from a given they could go back to their former self.
| They were both utterly destroyed, and things could have gone
| really badly, especially in Japan.
|
| I can't find the reference right but I remember reading
| average adult calorie intake to drop to ~1200 kcals in
| 1947/1948 in "embracing defeat" by John Dower. That period
| has a huge influence on Japan to this day, including
| architecture of Tokyo through black market.
|
| Both Japan and Germany had strong military govt culture, and
| became reliably democratic at the end of the allies
| occupation.
| markvdb wrote:
| s/Russia/Soviet Union/ . Sloppiness weakens trust in the rest of
| this otherwise intriguing post.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| It was quite common "back in the day" to call what was properly
| "the Soviet Union" just "Russia". And it wasn't just pure
| sloppiness, either; the Soviet Union and its predecessor
| Russian Empire both had Russia as their heart and soul.
|
| Also, everything in this article has been well known for ages.
| No need to hold back your trust. It's a nice writeup though!
| markvdb wrote:
| https://deportetie.kartes.lv is but one illustration of
| Soviet != Russia for history buffs. An empire's heart and
| soul is usually black ice. The USSR was not an exception.
| nsonha wrote:
| no more "sloppiness" than to refer to the USSR as just
| "Moscow", as that's where the majority of important decisions,
| the kinds that nuclear weapon would fall into, were made.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Russia is historical name of Ukraine before Moscow renamed
| their empire into Russian Empire. Ethnic Russians took
| meeting in 1910 and rebranded themselves into Ukrainians, to
| avoid confusion with bloody empire, then started Great
| Ukrainization, to separate themselves from enslaved and
| erased nations, which ended with mass murder of millions of
| Ukrainians by Russians in 1932-1934.
|
| Russian Empire died and buried in a grave in 1917. Don't dig
| it up, please.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| TL;DR: it became the Demon Core, after its core was repurposed in
| criticality experiments with poor methodology. Though the article
| is mostly about the politics of Japan's surrender, and of
| maybe/not dropping the third bomb.
|
| Kinda offtopic:
|
| > _Private Robert Hemmerly, was also irradiated but survived,
| only to die of cancer 33 years later._
|
| The phrasing is odd, "only to ..." is a colloquialism to indicate
| bad luck, as in to escape one bad event only to immediately fall
| to another bad event.
|
| But living 33 more years is a good amount of life! (and long
| enough interval to start doubting a direct causality between the
| irradiation and the cancer)
| stavros wrote:
| Is it just me, or should we be way more horrified by the fact
| that the US dropped atomic bombs on civilians? It would be like
| Russia dropping two bombs in Kyiv today, which is unthinkable,
| but it feels the US bombing of Japan is kind of shrugged off.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _should we be way more horrified by the fact that the US
| dropped atomic bombs on civilians?_
|
| Not really.
|
| Strategic bombing, as a concept, was about killing civilians.
| The idea that you should try not to kill civilians in war was
| still an evolving concept around WWII, in part because
| precision munitions and industrial warmaking were in their
| infancy and toddlerhood, respectively.
| stavros wrote:
| That's an interesting perspective, thanks.
| markovs_gun wrote:
| It was also a response to the horrors of world war 1, where
| armies faced each other in open fields and the conflict
| dragged on for years without lines changing much. The
| reasoning was that ending the war quickly by completely
| destroying the enemy's capacity and will to continue fighting
| was better than letting it drag on and become a meat grinder,
| even if that meant bombing civilians and civilian industry.
| Obviously this didn't work since WWII was both longer and
| more deadly than WWI but that was the thinking.
| defrost wrote:
| We should be as exactly horrified as we are by the fact the US
| dropped convential high explosives and incendaries on
| civilians.
|
| The firebombing of Tokyo had similar death and injury stats to
| the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and there were another 72
| cities in Japan completely destroyed by bombing prior to the
| atomic weapons being rushed into use before the war ended.
|
| Cities in Europe were also bombed, and later more tonnage was
| dropped by the US in SE Asia than they dropped in WWII .. many
| of those mines dropped remain to this day, still killing and
| maiming children.
| stavros wrote:
| Well, I am exactly as horrified by that as by the atomic
| bomb.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| We can probably agree that war itself is horrific.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > We should be as exactly horrified as we are by the fact the
| US dropped convential high explosives and incendaries on
| civilians.
|
| Not exactly. Having firebombs at our disposal does not
| require the head of _one country_ to have unaccountable power
| over the lives of everyone on earth. Firebombs do not require
| entire industries shrouded in secrecy, nor the transformation
| of security clearance, or lack there of, into a weapon for
| shutting down public inquiry and challenges, nor the creation
| of parallel government structure both invisible and
| unaccountable to the public.
|
| The effects on the cities may not be that different, but
| nuke's unmitigated corruption of the democratic system is
| certainly horrifying.
| krapp wrote:
| The atomic bombing of Japan didn't happen today, it happened
| nearly 80 years ago. Plenty of people consider it a war crime
| to this day, and plenty of people excuse it, but it's difficult
| to be horrified by events old enough to barely exist within
| living memory.
| pb060 wrote:
| 80 years are not so far in time for me as I recently realized
| that when I was born I was closer to the end of the war than
| my current age. That made me feel somehow more connected to
| that past event than to the present.
| codewench wrote:
| Obviously looking at it from today's perspective it's
| (hopefully) unthinkable, but there is a lot written from
| contemporary sources which make a fairly persuasive argument.
|
| The main concerns were that the Japanese government was simply
| not in a place where it could surrender, which meant a ground
| invasion of the Japanese mainland was seen as mandatory. Given
| the prior experiences of how dedicated Japanese defenders could
| be (eg Mount Suribachi), it was assumed that any actual attempt
| to take the Japanese mainland would result in untold deaths, to
| the point where the US has enough Purple Heart medals created
| (in anticipation of the casualties am invasion would involve)
| that they didn't have to restart production until 2008. As
| horrifying as it is, the first atomic bomb was considered the
| lesser evil. That said, Nagasaki is much much harder to defend.
|
| Unrelated, but I recommend everyone who can to visit Hiroshima
| and visit the museums there. Hopefully it will instill in
| everyone a fervent desire to never again see such horrific
| things enacted again.
| startupsfail wrote:
| It is a bit surprising that so much damage was inflicted on
| civilians with firebombing and all for the sake of what looks
| like vindictiveness. Surely after the victory it would have
| been possible to write the books, stating it was <<
| unconditional surrender >> regardless of what kind of
| surrender it actually was (it is victors who tend to be able
| to write history books as they see fit.)
| mc32 wrote:
| Don't worry, the Japanese are pretty good at writing their
| own history too.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _That said, Nagasaki is much much harder to defend._
|
| The first bomb was dropped August 6.
|
| The Japanese War Cabinet met on August 9 to discuss the
| situation, and concluded that the US didn't have the
| resources for more, so they concluded to not surrender. Even
| after the first bomb was dropped.
|
| In the middle of the meeting they learned of the second bomb
| which was dropped that morning.
|
| After the second bomb the War Cabinet was split 3-3. They
| called in the full cabinet and that was split as well.
|
| _Two_ bombs weren 't enough to decisively convince them to
| surrender, and so the Emperor had to be called in to break
| the deadlock.
|
| And yet we are to believe that even though two bombs were
| _barely_ enough to force a surrender, zero bombs would have
| sufficed?
| kps wrote:
| > _the US didn 't have the resources for more_
|
| They were correct that the US didn't have the resources for
| a second uranium bomb.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You're arguing semantics but aren't really making a
| counter point.
| throw0101d wrote:
| >> _the US didn 't have the resources for more_
|
| > _They were correct that the US didn 't have the
| resources for a second uranium bomb._
|
| Because the difference between a uranium bomb and a
| plutonium bomb is meaningful when you're the target...
| kps wrote:
| Japan didn't know until August 9 that the US was able to
| build plutonium bombs.
|
| Edit since I can't reply: The difference is meaningful
| when you're deciding whether to surrender. If you know
| that the US doesn't have enough refined uranium for
| another uranium bomb, and you have no evidence that the
| US can build plutonium bombs, then you have grounds to
| believe the bombing of Hiroshima was not repeatable.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _If you know that the US doesn 't have enough refined
| uranium for another uranium bomb_ [...]
|
| There was no way for the Japanese to know what the US was
| capable of. It was wishful thinking with zero evidence on
| the part of the Japanese leadership.
| nsonha wrote:
| > The Japanese War Cabinet met on August 9 to discuss the
| situation, and concluded that the US didn't have the
| resources for more
|
| does that sound believable to you? The Japanese somehow had
| intel on a secret new weapon? And confident about it to the
| point they are willing to bet their entire country on it,
| in a war that's already ending?
|
| Or does that sound like manufactured consent?
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| > The Japanese somehow had intel on a secret new weapon
|
| Yes. They did. The Mexico branch of the Japanese
| espionage service knew about the Trinity test in advance
| and sent agents to collect fallout to analyze. They
| already knew before Hiroshima that we had a working
| atomic bomb. They underestimated our isotope separation
| production capacity because their own U-235 isotope
| separation plant was behind schedule. There have been
| books written about the Japanese atomic bomb project. The
| day after Hiroshima, the Japanese government announced
| "We also have atomic bombs and we will use them against
| the invasion forces." They were expecting the war to last
| another year. The head of the Japanese atomic bomb
| project said that his military boss expected the war to
| last another year.
| zdw wrote:
| And even then there was still an attempted coup to try to
| stop the surrender:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyujo_incident
| _hao wrote:
| Japan's decision to surrender was most likely due to the
| fact that the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria with 1.5
| million men.[1] Yes, the atomic bombings were horrible, but
| the fire bombing of Tokyo wasn't much better. The Japanese
| regime didn't care that much. When the Soviets declared war
| that was the breaking point and their situation became
| hopeless. This point is very often overlooked by US based
| media and historians (I guess for obvious reasons), but the
| fact of the matter is that we don't know if only the two
| bombs would've been enough to make Japan capitulate.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _This point is very often overlooked by US based media
| and historians (I guess for obvious reasons), but the
| fact of the matter is that we don 't know if only the two
| bombs would've been enough to make Japan capitulate._
|
| This is covered by Walker in his book _Prompt and Utter
| Destruction_ :
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/829496
|
| And he still concludes that dropping the bombs was a
| necessary element in their surrender.
|
| The Japanese were expecting the Russians/Soviets to enter
| the war: the only surprise was that it was sooner than
| they expected (Spring 1946). Fighting them was already
| taken into account in their 'calculations'.
|
| From a 1946 article:
|
| > _About a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group
| of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent,
| well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked
| him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major
| move if the war had continued. He replied: "You would
| probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing
| operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack
| would have been made on such and such beaches."_
|
| > _" Could you have repelled this landing?" we asked, and
| he answered: "It would have been a very desperate fight,
| but I do not think we could have stopped you."_
|
| > _" What would have happened then?" we asked._
|
| > _He replied: "We would have kept on fighting until all
| Japanese were killed, but we would not have been
| defeated," by which he meant that they would not have
| been disgraced by surrender._
|
| *
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-
| the-...
|
| I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been
| willing to pull out of Manchuria, lose that territory,
| and use those troops for home island defence.
| cataphract wrote:
| So killing civilians en masse is fine, as long it forces
| the enemy to surrender with (probably) fewer casualties?
| Why even have laws of war then, if we adjust adjudicate
| these questions with a utilitarian calculus?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| You're just missing an entire half of the story here: which
| is the USSR attacking on the 9th of August!
|
| Of course if you omit the second most important factor then
| things start becoming obvious, but in reality the answer to
| this question is far from obvious (in neither direction,
| needless to say, the tankies who claim with certainty that
| the bombing was not needed are equally wrong)
| fortran77 wrote:
| > Unrelated, but I recommend everyone who can to visit
| Hiroshima and visit the museums there. Hopefully it will
| instill in everyone a fervent desire to never again see such
| horrific things enacted again.
|
| The Nagasaki muesum is very good, too. And it's a nicer town
| to visit today. (We were just there last month.)
| derekmhewitt wrote:
| I highly recommend the book 'Flyboys' by James Bradley (also
| the author of Flags of our Fathers) for help putting this
| period of WWII into context. A good portion of the end of the
| book discusses the firebombing of Japan and the dropping of the
| two nuclear bombs, and how that was rationalized as acceptable
| in the minds of those who participated.
| coin wrote:
| Kyiv isn't the aggressor
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Is it just me, or should we be way more horrified by the
| fact that the US dropped atomic bombs on civilians?_
|
| What was the alternative?
|
| The Japanese leadership knew for a year from their own internal
| reports that they couldn't win the war, and simply want to
| grind down US resolve. Imperial Japan wanted the following
| conditions:
|
| * Emperor stays on throne
|
| * Japan gets to keep territory
|
| * any allegation of (e.g.) war crimes would be dealt with
| internally by the Japanese themselves
|
| Would it be okay for Nazi Germany to surrender if:
|
| * Hitler and the Nazis got to stay in government
|
| * Germany got to keep Czechoslovakia, Poland, _etc_
|
| * war crime allegations would be dealt by the Nazis themselves
|
| The first bomb was dropped on August 6. The Japanese War
| Cabinet held a meeting on August 9 to discuss the situation,
| and decided not to surrender as they didn't think the US could
| create more bombs. So _even after_ the first bomb was dropped,
| they wouldn 't surrender.
|
| In the middle of the meeting they learned of the second bomb,
| which was dropped that morning.
|
| The War Cabinet was split 3-3 on whether to surrender. After
| the second bomb.
|
| They called in the full cabinet to discuss things. The full
| cabinet was split. After the second bomb.
|
| They called in the Emperor at that point, and he said to end
| the war. Though in his announcement that was broadcast over the
| radio, the word "surrender" was never used:
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito_surrender_broadcast#C...
|
| Seriously: what was the alternative? Invade the main islands
| (Operation Downfall)? What would have been the US casualties?
| What would have been the Japanese _civilian_ casualties? Or
| blockade Japan and starve them?
| defrost wrote:
| You are dot point framing a complex piece of history that has
| a wide spread of opinion from various historians.
|
| It deserves _at least_ an essay on just the situation and the
| various PoV 's, see:
|
| _The Decision to Use the Bomb: A Consensus View?_
|
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-
| to-u...
|
| There's a _very_ good case to be made that the primary
| motivation to _use_ the atomic weapons was the _fact_ that
| they existed ..
|
| developed at very great expense for a European War that no
| longer existed, Germany having surrended when the weapons
| were finally complete - with only one test on a tower in a
| desert the military side _wanted_ a real world 'battlefield'
| test and there was already an ongoing campaign to destroy
| each and every major and minor target in Japan (much much
| cheaper per city) using conventional HE & firebombs.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/03/08/the-decision-
| to-u..._
|
| Well, instead of reading that article, I have already read
| the book that it references, _Prompt and Utter Destruction:
| Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan_ :
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/829496
|
| It goes through the timeline of the events, including who
| knew what, at what point.
|
| Given Japanese intransigence (and their 'counter-demands'),
| the experiences of Okinawa, _etc_ , I don't see any
| reasonable alternatives--unless you think a bloodbath of
| Allied soldiers and Japanese civilians is reasonable:
|
| * https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/japans-last-
| ditch-...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps
|
| If Japan was not willing to surrender after one bomb, and
| _barely_ decided to surrender after two, what makes _you_
| think they 'd surrender with zero bombs dropped?
|
| Truman's first priority was to the US people. If bombing
| Japan achieved peace faster, and thus reduced US
| casualties, why wouldn't he take that option?
|
| Seriously: what is the counter-factual event in what the
| US/Allies should have done with Japan? Invade?
| Blockade/starve? Not go for unconditional surrender? Other?
| _What is (was) the alternative?_
|
| And I'm aware of the author of the article, Wellerstein,
| having read his book _Restricted Data: The History of
| Nuclear Secrecy in the United States_. He 's also the
| creator of the Nukemap website:
|
| * https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/
| petermcneeley wrote:
| Chomsky claims there was a bombing after the two atomic
| bombings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s1h6wT91sc
|
| I think when the atomic bombs were dropped Japan
| basically didnt have any means of defense. I think nuking
| a country that is defenseless is probably evil even if in
| their hearts they are unwilling to accept unconditional
| surrender (this last point is even in contention).
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Chomsky claims there was a bombing after the two
| atomic
| bombings.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s1h6wT91sc_
|
| The Japanese took 'too long' to surrender, so by the time
| they contacted the US government on August 14th, because
| of communication delays the sorties had already gone out
| early August 15th and dropped their payloads:
|
| * https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14980968
|
| > _I think when the atomic bombs were dropped Japan
| basically didnt have any means of defense._
|
| The Japanese didn't think they were defenseless:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_Fighting_Corps
|
| From a 1946 article:
|
| > _About a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group
| of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent,
| well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked
| him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major
| move if the war had continued. He replied: "You would
| probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing
| operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack
| would have been made on such and such beaches."_
|
| > _" Could you have repelled this landing?" we asked, and
| he answered: "It would have been a very desperate fight,
| but I do not think we could have stopped you."_
|
| > _" What would have happened then?" we asked._
|
| > _He replied: "We would have kept on fighting until all
| Japanese were killed, but we would not have been
| defeated," by which he meant that they would not have
| been disgraced by surrender._
|
| *
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-
| the-...
| petermcneeley wrote:
| > "At this stage of the war, the lack of modern weaponry
| and ammunition meant that most were armed with swords or
| even bamboo spears."
|
| So basically defenseless. I understand that your opinion
| is that at the time they did not think of themselves as
| defenseless but this actually doesnt matter to me in the
| moral claims. The fact is that they were defenseless and
| we nuked them twice. We nuke them because we wanted to
| test these weapons and AFAIK the USA kept these cities
| from bombing raids in order to test the effectiveness of
| the weapons.
|
| Also the Japanese being 'too long' to surrender because
| they were not a well organized fighting force by that
| time. I think it was days before they even understood
| what happened in Hiroshima.
|
| and to address your edit: The irony is that we actually
| gave them what they wanted. The wanted to keep the
| emperor and we caved.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _So basically defenseless._
|
| It doesn't matter what "reality" is: it matters what
| (your enemy's) perception is. The Japanese did not think
| themselves defenseless.
|
| You have not beaten your enemy when _you_ think you have:
| you have beaten your enemy when _they_ think you have.
| defrost wrote:
| > Well, instead of reading that article, I have already
| read the book that it references,
|
| It references _many_ books, with a number of _different_
| viewpoints and arguments.
|
| You've read a _single_ book with a _single_ viewpoint.
|
| > what makes you think they'd surrender with zero bombs
| dropped?
|
| There's a breadth of informed opinion on the matter; the
| article you haven't read outlines a number of them.
|
| > And I'm aware of the author of the article, Wellerstein
|
| Cool. But not read much of his work covering the breadth
| of opinion on the use of the atomic bomb.
|
| > He's also the creator of the Nukemap website
|
| I know, he based that on contributions from various
| geophysicists and physicists who have spoken to him IRL.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _It references_ many _books, with a number of different
| viewpoints and arguments._
|
| It references Walker and Alperovitz. I'll be sure to add
| Alperovitz to my reading list.
|
| > _You 've read a_ single _book with a_ single
| _viewpoint._
|
| I said I have read Walker. I have not said I've read
| _only_ Walker.
|
| > _There 's a breadth of informed opinion on the matter;
| the article you haven't read outlines a number of them._
|
| By "number of" do you mean "two": Walker and the
| "consensus" / "traditional" view, and Alperovitz and the
| (so-called) "revisionist" view. (Kuznick is mentioned in
| passing at the very end.)
|
| Walker is well aware of the ambiguity of the situation;
| from an interview:
|
| > _One argument has been made by the scholar Richard
| Frank, and I find it wonderfully convincing. Richard
| makes the argument - going back to the atomic bomb versus
| the Soviet invasion - he says that the bomb was essential
| to convince Hirohito to surrender. But that it was the
| Soviet invasion that convinced the generals of all those
| armies in China and other parts of East Asia to
| surrender. Because there was genuine concern, both among
| American officials and Japanese officials, that the
| emperor's order to surrender would not be obeyed by
| generals in East Asia, who had huge armies and who
| could've fought on for a very long time at enormous cost
| to everybody. Richard makes the argument that once the
| Soviets came in, then the generals out in the field, who
| were outraged by the idea of surrendering, knew they
| couldn't defeat the Soviets. So they went along with it.
| It's a very interesting argument that I think makes a
| very sensible separation of what the impact of the bomb
| was and the impact of the Soviet invasion._
|
| * https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-
| histories/j-samuel...
|
| Further:
|
| > _Walker: [...] Those are the positions. And as I, and a
| lot of others, argue - I'm certainly not alone - they're
| both seriously flawed. The traditional view because
| Truman did not face a stark choice between the bomb and
| an invasion. The invasion was not going to begin until on
| or around November 1, and a lot of could've happened
| between August and November of 1945. Also the view that
| if an invasion had been necessary, it would've cost
| hundreds of thousands of lives: there's simply no
| contemporaneous evidence that supports that argument. It
| was made after the war as a means to justify the use of
| the bomb against a really small number of critics, who in
| the late '40s, early '50s, were saying that perhaps the
| bomb wasn't necessary. It's also beyond question that the
| invasion was not inevitable. I mean, the idea that Truman
| had to use the bomb because if he didn't the only other
| option was an invasion is simply wrong. So, the
| traditional view in its pure form, that Truman used the
| bomb to avoid an invasion, simply doesn't hold up._
|
| > _Kelly: In the view of the revisionists._
|
| > _Walker: No, in the view of those of us who are
| somewhere in between. What I argue is that Truman used
| the bomb for the reasons he said he did, to end the war
| as quickly as possible. No one in a position of authority
| or knowledge, and certainly not his chief and military
| advisors, told him in the summer of 1945 that if you
| don't use the bomb, an invasion is inevitable and it's
| going to cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Estimates
| for lives lost that were projected by military experts in
| the summer of 1945 were far less than that, and the
| numbers are far from hard evidence. But there's no
| evidence whatsoever that he was ever told that hundreds
| of thousands of lives would be the cost of an invasion of
| Japan. That was something that came about later._
|
| > _My argument is that Truman didn't have to be told that
| an invasion would cost hundreds of thousands of lives. He
| knew it was going to cost a lot of lives, tens of
| thousands, if an invasion was necessary. He also knew
| that even without an invasion, the war was still going
| on. Okinawa had been defeated in late June of 1945, so we
| had one month when there weren't any major battlefronts
| between the end of the Battle of Okinawa and the end of
| the war, which is July 1945._
|
| > _In that month, about 775 American soldiers and Marines
| were killed in combat. About another 2,300 or 2,400 died
| from other causes, disease, wounds, accidents, whatever.
| So, you had 3,000 soldiers and Marines who were killed in
| the month of July of 1945 without any major
| battlefronts._
|
| > _You also had sailors being killed. The sinking of the
| U.S.S. Indianapolis occurred July 28 [misspoke: July 30],
| 1945, just a horrific event, in which a Japanese
| submarine attacked and sank the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Of
| the 1100 [misspoke: 1200] crewmembers, 880 died, either
| from the explosion of the ship or were stranded in water
| for a very long time and either died from exposure or
| from sharks. Just a horrific story._
|
| > _As long as the war was going on, that was going to
| happen, and that's what Truman and his advisors were
| concerned about. No one had to tell them that the
| alternative to using the bomb was saving far fewer lives.
| That number of 3,200 or 3,300 who died in July, that's
| just soldiers and Marines, so you have sailors on top of
| that. That was plenty of reason to use the bomb if it had
| a chance to end the war as quickly as possible._
|
| * _Ibid_
| retrocryptid wrote:
| +1
|
| Should we have dropped the bomb?
|
| That's the last decision in a series of policy questions on
| both sides, each a complex response to complex questions
| going back at least a decade.
| oneshtein wrote:
| We only consider the killing of civilians a crime when it's
| committed by those we define as our enemies.
|
| Replace Hiroshima with a hypothetical New York and ask your
| question again. Do you see an alternative to nuking of a
| hypothetical New York to win a war?
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Is it just me, or should we be way more horrified by the fact
| that the US dropped atomic bombs on civilians?
|
| First Japan was allied with nazi Germany. And nazi Germany was
| putting jews, handicapped people, romanians, gays, etc. into
| crematoriums, alive. These weren't soldiers either.
|
| Second Japan did the Pearl Harbor attack: up until then the US
| was still a neutral country in WWII.
|
| There were many ways to not get at war in the US. Those two
| weren't among them. What was the US supposed to do? Not drop
| the bomb and let Russia annihilate and conquer Japan?
|
| These two atomic bombs were horrible but during WWII the US
| pretty much single handedly saved (most of) the world from both
| nazism and stalinism.
|
| I'm not saying the US have always been acting in good faith
| lately but during WWII I'm not sure the US can be faulted much.
|
| Put it another way: a world war vs fucking evil incarnate _is_
| messy.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not a lot of nuance in your view of the U.S. role in WWII.
|
| For example, your point:
|
| > Japan did the Pearl Harbor attack: up until then the US was
| still a neutral country in WWII.
|
| The U.S. Export Control Act (July 1940), freezing of Japanese
| assets (July 1941) and then the oil embargo (August 1941) are
| examples of some of the nuance I see.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| The US did those things in response to Imperial Japan's
| invasion, occupation, and looting of other Asian nations.
| No nuance is needed; Japan was the aggressor pure and
| simple.
|
| Nobody would ever defend the Nazis as victims yet people
| come out of the woodwork to defend Imperial Japan, their
| brutal attempt at colonialism, and the equivalent holocaust
| they committed. As I've said before, the Japanese sure got
| good marketing after the war.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Who's defending Imperial Japan? Nuance just means
| recognizing that actors on both sides were participants
| in the build up. I dislike the wholesale excusing of one
| sides actions because the other side was worse.
|
| Given that Imperial Japan was so awful I'm wondering how
| far you would allow the U.S. to go? How about if the U.S.
| rounded up all Japanese Americans and put them in camps?
| Also completely okay, I guess, because Imperial Japan.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| No country is blameless in war and the United States is
| no exception, but there is no reasonable comparison
| between the evil Japan committed in Asia and what the
| United States did to Japanese Americans.
| oneshtein wrote:
| When enemy attacks our civilians -- it's a war crime.
|
| When enemy civilians die because of our attack -- it's
| just consequence of their foolish resistance.
|
| So, enemy commits war crime, while we are not!
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _Who 's defending Imperial Japan?_"
|
| When you repeat the justification that the Japanese
| government used for going to war with the US more or less
| verbatim without explaining the background, well, that
| would be you, sir.
|
| > " _I dislike the wholesale excusing of one sides
| actions because the other side was worse._ "
|
| That's not a moral or principled stance. That's just
| whataboutism.
|
| > " _Given that Imperial Japan was so awful I 'm
| wondering how far you would allow the U.S. to go?_"
|
| You seem to be looking for an answer to paint me in a bad
| light and I'm feeling magnanimous today so I'll oblige
| you: like most Asians other than the Japanese, I see no
| moral problem with either the atomic bombings or the
| firebombings of Japanese cities in WW2.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I am white but I have been told by my (Taiwanese) manager
| that, "All Asian's hate the Japanese." I know only a
| little of the history of Japan and its neighbors but he
| assured me there is a long history of Japan being the
| aggressor behind this sentiment.
|
| I don't feel like I'm trying to paint you in a bad light,
| rather hoping you'll concede that one side doesn't get a
| free pass if the other does something atrocious.
|
| Perhaps it was my having been raised a Quaker during a
| formative period of my life, but an eye for an eye is
| quite the opposite of my philosophy.
| usefulcat wrote:
| > First Japan was allied with nazi Germany
|
| That's an odd way to critique Imperial Japan, given that the
| US was allied with the Soviets, under Stalin no less..
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It is horrific. I somewhat purge my feelings of guilt (I was
| born in the U.S.) by believing they "did not know what they
| were doing."
|
| It's maybe a stretch to compare it to modern Russia bombing
| Kyiv -- because modern atomic weapons are orders of magnitude
| _more_ horrific.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| It is not unthinkable. That is the problem.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Ukraine can nuke Moscow as well. Should we?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I thought Ukraine gave up all their nukes after the
| dissolution of the USSR.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Yes, we gave up everything that can harm USA, including
| nuclear silos and strategic bombers, in exchange to safety
| assurances. Is Ukraine safe now?
| pfdietz wrote:
| No one will make that mistake again.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| They never had the launch codes anyway.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| "Launch codes" was a mostly US thing.
|
| In the UK it was famously a cheap lock.
|
| In the USSR, physical control of warheads was supposed to
| be under the KGB according to some sources.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| The US dropped not just the nuclear bombs on civilians.
|
| > The raids that were conducted by the U.S. military on the
| night of 9-10 March 1945, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse, are
| the single most destructive bombing raid in human history.[1]
| 16 square miles (41 km2; 10,000 acres) of central Tokyo was
| destroyed, leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over
| one million homeless.[1] The atomic bombing of Hiroshima in
| August 1945, by comparison, resulted in the immediate death of
| an estimated 70,000 to 150,000 people.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
| a-french-anon wrote:
| In the documentary The Fog of War, former U.S. Secretary of
| Defense Robert McNamara recalls General Curtis LeMay, who
| relayed the Presidential order to drop nuclear bombs on Japan,
| said: "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been
| prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and
| I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized
| that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had
| lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if
| you win? Selden mentions another critique of the
| nuclear bombing, which he says the U.S. government effectively
| suppressed for twenty-five years, as worth mention. On 11
| August 1945, the Japanese government filed an official protest
| over the atomic bombing to the U.S. State Department through
| the Swiss Legation in Tokyo
|
| Truth is most people here are hypocrites, might makes right and
| the end justifies the means, but only for our side! Mind you,
| I'm no arguing that these obvious truths are wrong, but
| intellectual honesty shouldn't go to the trash in favour of
| wishful thinking and posturing.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The final Japanese defense of their home islands would have
| involved arming every man, woman, and child, for them to act as
| suicide warriors. "The Glorious Death of the 100 Million" (note
| the name was an exaggeration of their actual population)
|
| This made the entire population a military target (except for
| very young children, I guess).
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's still not 100% clear if the nuclear bombing was
| necessary to force the Japanese to surrender, the Soviet
| invasion of Manchuria could have been enough, making the
| civilian casualties in Hiroshima and Nagasaki pointless
| victims.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Of what relevance is that question? Was the US supposed to
| determine that the use was necessary before it was used?
| How is that even supposed to be determined, especially in
| wartime when the inner workings of the enemy are opaque?
| advisedwang wrote:
| The horrifying thing is that the US knew the Japanese wanted to
| surrender, and knew that demanding abdication of the emperor
| was both a major impediment, unnecessary and in fact harmful
| (because it would reduce the number of outposts that would
| accept the surrender order). The US had broken the codes used
| with messages to diplomats in the USSR and other traffic and
| could clearly see the Japanese situation. Despite this they
| never waivered from ambiguous "unconditional surrender"
| terminology... likely so they could continue pressing the front
| in Korea which would also end with a peace.
|
| So the US could have had peace earlier, with several hundred
| thousand less deaths, if they had been willing to put in
| writing specifically what they actually wanted, and what they
| got in the end.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| That would have been the fourth atomic bomb. The first was the
| Trinity detonation. Second was Hiroshima. Third was Nagasaki.
|
| FWIW. You can see the fourth gadget at the National Museum of
| Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque.
| woodpanel wrote:
| 100,000 civilians killed instantly and an additional 130,000 died
| from the exposure afterwards and till this day no official excuse
| from the US. [1]
|
| In my social circles I'm usually the first one pointing out the
| tiniest scent of anti-americanisms but _this_ is too pathetic,
| even for me.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| >100,000 civilians killed instantly and an additional 130,000
| died from the exposure afterwards and till this day no official
| excuse from the US.
|
| With all due respect to the enormous civilian suffering behind
| yours and the following numbers, why should there be an
| official excuse other than the obvious of winning the war
| against a barbaric enemy that had already ferociously invaded
| most of eastern Asia, the western Pacific and ruthlessly killed
| over 15 million people in the process?
|
| The atomic bombings, by the perspective of the time and what
| had already been done, weren't even so terrible in terms of
| dead. The mass firebombing campaigns of the entire last couple
| years of the war against Japanese cities, using completely
| conventional weapons, had already killed possibly as many as
| 700,000 people with hardly any allied leader batting an eye, or
| the U.S. public for that matter. Given this mentality, and the
| subsequent lack of an apology for those conventional bombings,
| what would have made the atomic bombings deeply unique? (except
| for the nature of the bombs themselves).
|
| Let's not also forget that Japan itself did everything possible
| to make the use of atomic bombs seem reasonable, having
| promised repeatedly that it would fight even in the face of
| horrendous casualties both for its own people and the forces of
| any invading army. Given the absolutist stance of Japanese
| forces in the field previous to those last weeks, fighting
| until every last man is dead and killing as many civilians as
| they could in the process, on directives and mentalities
| instilled directly from Tokyo, it's not hard to see why the
| Americans took seriously the idea of an unimaginable bloodbath
| in any potential invasion of the home islands.
|
| Just look at the battles of Okinawa, in which the local forces
| encouraged their own local civilians to commit mass suicide as
| they lost the island, or the battle of Manilla, in which the
| knowingly losing Japanese just kept fighting, butchering,
| raping and burning the city solely for the sake of doing so.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but the people making those threats aren't the people
| who were killed. As you yourself say, they were civilians;
| and they certainly weren't in Manilla.
| billti wrote:
| > was foolishly violating the safety protocols by using a
| screwdriver to hold the two halves of the sphere apart. When the
| screwdriver slipped, the core dropped to form a critical mass
|
| I always thought the material had to be forced together at high
| pressure for the chain reaction to start. Crazy that just
| dropping it had such dire consequences.
| charles_f wrote:
| I was also surprised. I thought you had to use an explosive to
| initiate the reaction. I never took the expression "critical
| mass" to such a literal expression, but it seems to be.
| eig wrote:
| You don't need to force the halves together quickly to start a
| chain reaction, but you do need to put them together fast to
| create a bomb. If it's not fast enough you will get a "Fizzle"
| [0] where some chain reaction is occurring but not over a small
| enough timespan to make a bomb or to stop the material from
| disintegrating itself. A similar slow chain reaction process is
| used to control energy release in nuclear power plants.
|
| [0] -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_chain_reaction#Prede...
| SapporoChris wrote:
| For further reading about the core's history.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
|
| It's also been discussed numerous times on this board.
| mlsu wrote:
| It is fascinating for sure. I don't think there's anything in
| chemistry like it. It depends a lot on the geometry. A chemical
| reaction can be sped up or slowed down by the shape of
| something, but that's just because of exposed surface area.
|
| In the case of Slotin, the thing he dropped onto the core was a
| neutron reflector so it redirected neutrons back into the core.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/near-disaster-federa...
|
| This is an interesting read, it's a story about a more recent
| near criticality that took place in 2011.. You can see a
| picture in the article of the dangerous configuration -- it's
| just a few rods of plutonium near each other. Any closer, if
| one tips over into the other, and they might go hot and release
| a huge amount of radiation.
| djmips wrote:
| Harry Daghlian dropped a neutron deflector in the first
| incident, Slotin allowed two halves to come together AFAIK.
| kragen wrote:
| you say 'such dire consequences', but given that your apparent
| point of comparison is atomic bombs, i would rather say that
| the consequences were fairly mild: no buildings were destroyed,
| no fallout was released, and only one person died rather than
| hundreds of thousands. it didn't even kill everyone in the
| room, and the person who it did kill survived for over a week,
| though possibly he wished he hadn't
|
| nuclear reactors also do not force material together at high
| pressure, but nevertheless achieve criticality
| dxs wrote:
| This book is an incredibly good read: "'The Making of the Atomic
| Bomb' is a history book written by the American journalist and
| historian Richard Rhodes, first published by Simon & Schuster in
| 1987. The book won multiple awards, including Pulitzer Prize for
| General Non-Fiction. The narrative covers people and events from
| early 20th century discoveries leading to the science of nuclear
| fission, through the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings of
| Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
|
| Possibly the best book that I have ever read. It deals with many
| of the issues raised in the comments here, and with politics,
| industrial development, economics, military capabilities, and the
| history of modern physics.
|
| Rhodes also wrote "'Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb',
| which told the story of the atomic espionage during World War II,
| the debates over whether the hydrogen bomb ought to be produced,
| and the eventual creation of the bomb and its consequences for
| the arms race." Also impeccable
|
| Info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb
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