OK, was it wrong to bomb Japan?

Here is an opinion by "military experts" - specifically the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

"Studies estimating total U.S. casualties were equally varied and no less grim. One by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April 1945 resulted in an estimate of 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities. Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, estimated 268,000 casualties (35%). Former President Herbert Hoover sent a memorandum to President Truman and Secretary of War Stimson, with “conservative” estimates of 500,000 to 1,000,000 fatalities. A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated the costs at 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities."

An "easy" target caused over 50% American casualties:

"In the fall of 1944, Marines landed on the small island of Peleliu, just east of the Philippines, for what was supposed to be a four-day mission. The battle lasted two months. At Peleliu, the Japanese unveiled a new defense strategy. Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, the Japanese commander, constructed a system of heavily fortified bunkers, caves, and underground positions, and waited for the Marines to attack them, and they replaced the fruitless banzai attacks with coordinated counterattacks. Much of the island was solid volcanic rock, making the digging of foxholes with the standard-issue entrenching tool impossible. When the Marines sought cover and concealment, the terrain’s jagged, sharp edges cut up their uniforms, bodies, and equipment. The plan was to make Peleliu a bloody war of attrition, and it worked well. The fight for Umurbrogol Mountain is considered by many to be the most difficult fight that the U.S. military encountered in the entire Second World War. At Peleliu, U.S. forces suffered 50% casualties, including 1,794 killed. Japanese losses were 10,695 killed and only 202 captured."

Notably, out of over 10,000 troops, all but 202 Japanese soldiers literally fought to the death. Even moreso on Iwo Jima. Over 26,000 American casualities. Of 18,000 Japanese, all but 216 fought to the death.

" American casualties on Iwo Jima were 6,822 killed or missing and 19,217 wounded. Japanese casualties were about 18,000 killed or missing, and only 216 captured. Meanwhile, another method of Japanese resistance was emerging. With the Japanese navy neutralized, the Japanese resorted to suicide missions designed to turn piloted aircraft into guided bombs. A kamikaze air attack on ships anchored at sea on February 21 sunk an escort carrier and did severe damage to the fleet carrier Saratoga. It was a harbinger of things to come."

Still worse on Okinawa: 95,000 Japanese killed. 150,000 civilian casualties, and over 50,000 American casualities. More people died just in fighting just for Okinawa than killed by the 2 atom bombs. There were more just civilian deaths in Okinawa than those two bombs.

"Japanese defenders and civilians fought to the death (even women with spears) or committed suicide rather than be captured. The civilians had been told the Americans would go on a rampage of killing and raping. About 95,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and possibly as many as 150,000 civilians died, or 25% of the civilian population. And the fierce resistance took a heavy toll on the Americans; 12,513 were killed on Okinawa, and another 38,916 were wounded."

5,000,000 to 10,000,000 Japanese civilian deaths:

"The study done for Secretary of War Stimson predicted five to ten million Japanese fatalities. There is support for the bomb even among some Japanese. In 1983, at the annual observance of Hiroshima's destruction, an aging Japanese professor recalled that at war’s end, due to the extreme food rationing, he had weighed less than 90 pounds and could scarcely climb a flight of stairs. "I couldn't have survived another month," he said. "If the military had its way, we would have fought until all 80 million Japanese were dead. Only the atomic bomb saved me. Not me alone, but many Japanese, ironically speaking, were saved by the atomic bomb."

"As Army Chief of Staff George Marshall later put it, “a democracy cannot fight a Seven Years’ war.” By the summer of 1945 the American military was exhausted, and the sheer number of troops needed for Operation Downfall meant that not only would the troops in the Pacific have to make one more landing, but even many of those troops whose valor and sacrifice had brought an end to the Nazi Third Reich were to be sent Pacific."

The TWO bombs did convince the Emperor to surrender over protest of the military:

"A third concurrent argument defending the bomb is the observation that even after the first two bombs were dropped, and the Russians had declared war, the Japanese still almost did not surrender. The Japanese cabinet convened in emergency session on August 7. Military authorities refused to concede that the Hiroshima bomb was atomic in nature and refused to consider surrender. The following day, Emperor Hirohito privately expressed to Prime Minister Togo his determination that the war should end and the cabinet was convened again on August 9. At this point Prime Minister Suzuki was in agreement, but a unanimous decision was required and three of the military chiefs still refused to admit defeat. Some in the leadership argued that there was no way the Americans could have refined enough fissionable material to produce more than one bomb. But then the bombing of Nagasaki had demonstrated otherwise, and a lie told by a downed American pilot convinced War Minister Korechika Anami that the Americans had as many as a hundred bombs. (The official scientific report confirming the bomb was atomic arrived at Imperial Headquarters on the 10th). Even so, hours of meetings and debates lasting well into the early morning hours of the 10th still resulted in a 3-3 deadlock. Prime Minister Suzuki then took the unprecedented step of asking Emperor Hirohito, who never spoke at cabinet meetings, to break the deadlock."

The bombs also convinced that we would destroy Japan if that's what it took. The Japanese military believed they were superior because of their brutality. They had outright slaughtered millions of Chinese. They had murdered the vast majority of prisoners. They would not tolerate their own soldiers surrendering and were clearly willing to sacrifice any and all civilians. They believed we did not have the stomach to destroy Japan and fundamentally were cowardly. Of the many, many reasons for using the atom bombs, it was to make it clear to Japan that we did have the determination to totally destroy Japan. This was, among things, conveyed as retaliation for such as the Bataan death march.

In his radio broadcast, the Japanese Emperor said that if Japan did not surrender, it would be the total extinction of the Japanese people due to the atom bombs. Every Japanese killed. Zero American casualties doing so.

The atom bombs killed less people than our firebombings were causing. The atom bombs killed less people than were dying just on the small islands we had fought on. The atom bombs were not about killing. They were about making a clear statement that their strategy of fighting to the last Japanese death while causing millions of American casualties was no longer viable. The MESSAGE, via atomic bombs, was that we could totally destroy Japan killing every Japanese in furious retaliation - with zero casualties ourselves. The second bomb defeated the claim of the Japanese military that we couldn't make more atom bombs, and instead the Emperor believed our claim that we had hundreds of atom bombs (we didn't, we just had ONE left.)

The atom bombs - Japan now believing we had hundreds more (we had one more) - defeated the belief in mass homeland defense causing millions of American casualties. Those two bombs convinced Japan's civilian government that we could and would kill every Japanese in Japan - all 80,000,000 - without 1 American casualty - if Japan did not surrender immediately. It was a bluff we pulled off - ending war and saving 10,000,000 lives.

One other "fact." After demonstrating the power of atom bombs? There has never been another war between major powers or another world. Since dropping the atom bombs, the number of deaths per year in wars is a tiny fraction of what it was prior to atomic weapons. With atom bombs and knowing what they do, war between the USSR and the USA/Europe would have likely if not certain, which casualties going into the many tens of millions. Those two bomb dropped likely has saved 100,000,000 lives or more in the absence of world war.

THOSE ARE "FACTS," not opinions of some military leaders who wanted perpetual war and more battle victories claims and the ego power that brought them.

http://www.authentichistory.com/1939-1945/1-war/4-Pacific/4-abombdecision/2-support/

 

Thankfully no invasion was going to be needed according to the military experts at the time.

 

Non sequitur.

 

You assume that media would share the truth or that academia would faithfully interpret it.

 

I am not sure of what point you are trying to make. Can you elaborate just a bit ?

 

Most of Japan is mountainous, cold during the winter, and unsuited to growing food. Most of the population, even then, was urbanized. If you cut off the urban centers from their most efficient ways of getting in food, there is no way in hell they are going to sustain "much of it's population indefinitely".

The Japanese nuclear weapons program was based in Manchuria, which you know, got overrun by the Soviets. Plus they had no delivery vehicle.

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I'm countering the argument that the only options were nukes or invasion. I agree that the best options were either nukes or allowing a conditional surrender.

 

Just for the record, my dad, who came ashore at Omaha Beach one week after D Day and fought in the hedgerows, and on to Germany, was one of the millions on notice that they were going to be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.

While it's selectively convienient to indulge in revisionist history using cherry picked fact, the reality is that these things must be viewed within the context of thier times. (remember that the next time one of these right wing attempts to rewrite the history of the civil rights struggle pops up.)

My dad had no idea what Leahey thought, and probably never heard of Oppenheimer in 1945, but he, and millions like him firmly believe Truman made the right call.

 

No they weren't. We had numerous options beyond nukes and invading.

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The best argument was to allow a conditional surrender and give them the only condition they wanted and that we ended up letting them had anyway: immunity for and preservation of the Japanese imperial family.

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Japan wouldn't have lasted 8 months. Forget decades.

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Not American ones.

 

The decision in this case work out just fine for us and the Japanese people as a whole.

 

Except for the women and children in two particular cities.

 

The plans was all set to go to invaded the home islands and that what would had happen but for the two atoms bombs and next starving out cities populations in order to get the military to surrender did not work for the Germans when dealing with the Russians nor would it had work for us in dealing with the Japaneses.

 

IOW, you do not want to address the question.

 

Too bad for them and also too bad for the 100,000 plus women and the children that died in the fire bombings of Tokyo with the thousand bombers raids.

Or the 300,000 women and children that was killed by the Japanese army in the rape of Nanking

 

The Germans never succeeded in totally cutting off Leningrad and their encirclement of Stalingrad lasted only a few weeks before a relief corridor was established.

That doesn't compare to the total blockade of Japan that we had and that Japan couldn't break.

 

The greatest military minds of the day disagree with you

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Yes it is too bad for them. On that we agree

 

You apparently have know idea how little food is required to sustain active human beings. The Japanese nuclear program was not based exclusively in Manchuria.
The massive research facility that used vivisection to discover biological or chemical weapon that could depopulate China was based in Manchuria.

 

The Japanese made a massive investment in a research facility in Manchuria aimed at the liquidation of the Chinese people in preparation for Japanese settlement.

 

The reactors Japan built to produce nuclear material were in Manchuria. A nuclear bomb program is pointless if you can't produce enriched uranium or plutonium to fuel it. Plus (again) they didn't have a vehicle for delivery.

It takes little food to sustain human beings doing nothing. You want *active* human beings, you are going to need more food than can be carried by hand across mountains while being strafed by fighter-bombers with total air supremacy.

 

The truth seems to really hurt the advocates of endless war that have prevailed since the last American military victories that ended WW II.

 

However, they had no idea that while unable to mount meaningful military operations the Japanese had no intention of surrendering unconditionally ergo the war would have continued for months if not years costing hundreds of thousands if not millions of Japanese lives.

 

Endless war is only good for the warmongers.

 

True but those same minds lacked the information we have today which shows they were wrong in many cases.

 

Again the best military leaders of the time disagree with your assessment

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That is an opinion with no evidence

 

Yes, it was okay to use the BOMB. The pluses were bounteous.

 

Exactly. Atomic weapons have saved and continue to save lives to this day.