The same way that the Nazis were still held accountable for Birkenau, Auschwitz, and Treblinka after World War II. Letting the Japanese get away with their crimes is certainly a sore point that remains unaddressed , according to those who live in the Pacific Rim...
FDR lives through all of 1945, test-explodes atomic bomb off Japanese coast.
- Thread starter GeographyDude
- Start date
Don't try and pretend that Japan was innocent here. Whatever faults the US had it didn't force Chinese boys to commit incest with their relatives, nor did it commit rapes in the hundreds of thousand to millions nor did it use slave labor nor did it have beheading contests or use live human beings for bayonett or machine gun practice or.......
trurle
Banned
I do not believe many people immediately postwar, including judges of Tribuanal of Far East, were concerned much about justice (or retribution). Immediate and lasting peace was a priority. To put very simply, the choice was between armed Japanese guerrilla and noisy Korean/Chinese. US negotiators and prosecutors have made a rational choice. Right or wrong, the future will show.
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The US actually had a third device ready for deployment on August 19-20, with plans for 3-12 more by the end of the year, and up to 50 in 1946. In a lot of ways the Manhattan Project was only just spinning up when the war ended.
Actually they were very much concerned. Consider that Mao Tse-tung and Kim Il-sung pointed out in their recruitment and propaganda, "Why is America allying with the same people who enslaved and killed us? Raped our wives and daughters?"
The cabinet only votes that way based on unconditional surrender.
Any surrender which respects even a bit of the Emperor will be easier to pass
trurle
Banned
Plans may be. Production plans are quite loosely connected to reality. Actual production was 2 additional plutonium bombs until end of 1945. And i do not believe the Manhattan project resource allocation was reduced at end of war. It was rather increased as conventional weapons production projects have started to wind down.
Well, the decision process of surrender was typical for Japanese, even for today`s Japanese. Everybody in government or army of Japan have worked very hard to shed any responsibility, finally delegating all responsibility to Hirohito, who evaluated risks and decided to surrender 14 August 1945 (it took additional day to propagate decision through command chain before public declaration). No surprise the resistance to decision was very small to nil. Actually cabinet have unanimously decided to avoid responsibility by noon 9th August already. Standard bureaucratic reaction "ass covering" was triggered.
Therefore, debatable points are:
1) Was nuclear bombing necessary to trigger chain reaction of responsibility shedding among Japanese leadership? (i.m.h.o., no - it already developed in few hours between start of Soviet invasion and bombing of Nagasaki, therefore causative agent was likely Soviet invasion)
2) Had nuclear bombing contributed much to Hirohito`s decision? (i.m.h.o. no - the majority of inquiries by Hirohito after 9th August were concerning conventional warfare).
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I think he has a point. What US voters think far outweigh what Korea and China thinks to US politicians and the US negotiators had to please them. They weren't elected by the Chinese.
Even assuming you are right, it would only be in 20/20 hindsight.
When the US decision makers gave the go-ahead for the nuclear bombings, what they had was a commitment by the Soviets to declare war on Japan within 90 days from the defeat of Germany. Now, it's not as if the Soviets at the time were famous for being reliable. And a declaration of war - that might be something like what the French had done on the Germans in 1939.
Meanwhile, US troops were being shifted from Europe to the Pacific. Plans were being worked on for a conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands, and casualties were expected to range from terribly heavy to horrifying. The electorate back in the US homeland wanted their boys back, today.
So the US decision makers had not only every right, but also every reason to go ahead with the solution that they thought would speed things up and save as many US servicemen's lives as possible. Waiting and hoping that the Soviets would bring Japan to see reason on their own would have been foolish.
That makes it seem as if it's a possibility that the total before the end of the year is as low as the third plus another three. Total 4.
That would be wrong. We have unclassified documents that state very clearly, based not on vague "plans" but on the rate of production as it was in reality in mid-August that three bombs per month would be available starting with the first week of September. They would be "evenly spaced" at about 10-days' intervals. So it's the second figure you mention that is the realistic one: the third shot August 19, and then 3 x 4 remaining months = 12 by the end of the year. Total 13.
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Besides what difference does that make in the end? Japan is going to be there in 1946 and has no real defense against the B-29 . The most that happens is that the nukes drop in 1946 and possibly 1947 and Japan is forced to surrender anyway.
Actually, many American soldiers including Chenault's Flying Tigers and Douglas MacArthur were witness and subject to the atrocities in the Pacific, and were interested in their "pound of flesh".
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
As I understand it was directly called terror bombing and Churchill was all in favor, until he chose (insincerely) to distance himself politically.
https://books.google.com/books?id=H...=onepage&q=churchill “terror bombing”&f=false
I guess I draw a moral distinction, what might be acceptable in ‘42 and ‘43 when the result was in doubt, may not be acceptable when the allies are closing in on victory.
We clearly want to bomb naval bases, air bases, factories, oil refinery, and similar targets which are part of the capacity to wage war. “crushing civilian morale” is just a (poor) excuse for revenge bombing.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
And it’s at least as much social context as it is pure logic.
These are three characters from the gangster movie Donnie Brasco (1997). The tall guy smoking the cigarette is Sonny Black. I wouldn’t want to cheat him on a business deal and bank on the fact that he’s not going to mind, that much. I mean, would you?
My point being we can learn a lot from mobsters even if we don’t follow that way of life.
Threats are better delivered privately. Say it’s not you, it’s these other people. For example, say: After the Bataan Death March, and that’s what we Americans are calling it, the Bataan Death March, the American public are insisting upon revenge. And if anything elected officials, Senators for example, are more gung-ho that the average citizen because they want to be seen taking a lead. If we have to do a mainland invasion with the inevitable casualties, this feeling for revenge will be all the higher. Right now, I can give you a private assurance that we won’t execute the Emperor. Later on, I don’t know if I’ll be able to say that [use doubt in your favor].
In other words, if we weren’t negotiating with the Japanese behind the scenes, we should have been.
No.
Now we know Germany would have never surrendered, no matter how much it was bombed (save, of course, in case a bomb happened to kill Hitler, but at that time he spent most of his time inside a pretty tough bunker). At the time they didn't.
On the contrary, they knew that they had landed on the Italian homeland territory on July 9, that they had been hitting with increasing strength the Italian cities, that the campaign had further seen a crescendo between the landing and July 22 (hitting, first and foremost, Rome, but also Turin, Bologna, Cagliari, Foggia and other cities), and that - on July 25 the Fascist regime fell. The bombings continued in August, and in short order feelers were sent out by the new Italian government, seeking terms.
So a case could be made that the third most important Axis member had surrendered very quickly, once its armies had been defeated, part of its homeland invaded, and its civilians kept under bombing. And that would at least be somewhat indicative.
Interestingly for us, even if not a supporting argument in May 1945, is that the second most important Axis member would surrender with parts of its armies undefeated, no part of its homeland invaded, and its civilians kept under bombing, just some three months later.
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All that said, if you have built an extravagantly costly, gigantic airfleet, and you have ground troops that take casualties every day on the frontline, and you have doubts about the real effectiveness of that fleet, what do you do? Do you demand the PBI to finish the job at its own cost, while you send the flyboys on holiday?
Vastly outnumbered by those who wanted to avoid a guerrilla war that could last a decade or more.
Dresden had a decent number of munitions factories and it was a transport hub that was important in allowing Germany to reinforce and resupply the Eastern Front.
Japan definitely never faced up to its aggression leading up to the war. My nephew married a wonderful Japanese woman, but she had never heard of Pearl Harbor until she moved to the US.
But who would certainly be willing to see two or more nuclear weapons dropped on cities if the Japanese refused to surrender unconditionally,...
Then there were the other issues with the occupation, censorship of left-wing thought, keeping Hirihito on the throne and not forcing him to abdicate at the very least, allowing the very same people in charge of the war effort to remain in high positions afterwards and so on.