Operation Downfall 1945:US invasion of Japan

[Alex1guy]

Just on the Atomic bomb thing and it's moral justifications. For the Americans it seemed to be the option which reduced casualties to themselves, which is understandable. While the Japanese were negotiating with the Soviets, the WAllies were kept in the dark so they went with the plan which they thought was best. It's hard to call the A Bombs "morally right" considering their effects, but it was "better" than the alternative. In such a horrible situation, morality has flown the coop right from the get go.

 

[Cook]

My impression of what passed for Japanese "strategy" in the last months of the war is that they were hoping to be able to gain some sort of victory that would allow then to negotiate from a position of relative strength.

Actually, they were hoping to gain a victory that would make them a credible ally to the Soviets against the Anglo-Americans. We know from the interrogations conducted after the war as part of the Far East Asian War Crimes Tribunal what was going on in the Japanese cabinet in those days in August 1945.

When the Allies invaded Okinawa in April 1945 Emperor Hirohito pressed for a maximum effort to be undertaken in the defence of the island so that Japan would be still considered a credible military force by the Soviet Union, who he’d authorised negotiations with: Soviet oil in return for Japan’s support in the inevitable war between the Soviet Union and the Western Democracies. It was the same delusional thinking that had infected Goebbels, Himmler and other senior Nazis in the last days of their regime. When Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov replied on April 5, 1945 by rejecting the Japanese request for oil and told the Japanese that their Non-Aggression Pact would not be renewed even that didn’t immediately alarm the Japanese command because the Pact wasn’t due to expire until 1946.

To be fair to the Japanese leadership, the relationship between the Soviets and Americans did break down and lead to war, just not as quickly as the Japanese hopes and the resulting war was cold, not hot.

 

[MerryPrankster]

These are the simple facts of the matter. And blindly repeating the old myths over sixty years later makes a person complicit in it. Go ahead, please guess my motive. Quite frankly, I'd love to hear what you come up with.

The revisionist school of Cold War historiography, which is almost exclusively leftist (the only non-socialist adherent I can think of is Murray Rothbard), often treats the atomic bombings of Japan as throwing down the gauntlet against the Soviet Union rather than the stated goal of ending the war without the bloodbath of invasion, and therefore unnecessary and immoral for that reason.

(Revisionist and Soviet apologist William Blum starts out his denunciation of post-1945 US foreign policy with the atomic bombings.)

If you think I'm a racist complicit in mass murderer, I'm perfectly justified in thinking you an anti-American Communist propagandist.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Just on the Atomic bomb thing and it's moral justifications. For the Americans it seemed to be the option which reduced casualties to themselves, which is understandable. While the Japanese were negotiating with the Soviets, the WAllies were kept in the dark so they went with the plan which they thought was best. It's hard to call the A Bombs "morally right" considering their effects, but it was "better" than the alternative. In such a horrible situation, morality has flown the coop right from the get go.

My AP US History book from high school discusses the Japanese negotiations with the Soviets and said that at the time, there were questions about whether these Japanese actually were speaking for their government.

(At least that's what I remember. It has been over 10 years since I took AP US History.)

 

[Alex1guy]

The revisionist school of Cold War historiography, which is almost exclusively leftist (the only non-socialist adherent I can think of is Murray Rothbard), often treats the atomic bombings of Japan as throwing down the gauntlet against the Soviet Union rather than the stated goal of ending the war without the bloodbath of invasion, and therefore unnecessary and immoral for that reason.

(Revisionist William Blum starts out his denunciation of post-1945 US foreign policy with the atomic bombings.)

If you think I'm a racist complicit in mass murderer, I'm perfectly justified in thinking you a Communist propagandist.

Can I see his stuff if you have a link? Not that I'm questioning it, I'm just curious to see the other side of the argument here. I was always under the impression the WAllies were unsure that the Japanese were going to surrender even when the Soviets jumped on the war wagon.

EDIT: My wikipedia is not playing ball for some reason atm is all :/

 

[MerryPrankster]

Can I see his argument if you have a link? Not that I'm questioning it, I'm just curious to see the other side of the argument here. I was always under the impression the WAllies were unsure that the Japanese were going to surrender even when the Soviets jumped on the war wagon.

It's in an older edition of Killing Hope that I read.

Here's one of Blum's essays. He calls it "the first act of the Cold War."

http://killinghope.org/essays6/abomb.htm

I actually gave Blum's book a decent review on Amazon because it did include unpleasant truths about US behavior in Latin America, but at the same time, it blatantly propagandized in favor of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

 

[MerryPrankster]

And lest anyone think I'm some inflexible jackass mindlessly-devoted to 'Murica, I originally didn't give the Soviet intervention any credit at all, but the various discussions here showed me that it did play a role.

Hirohito sent out two surrender messages, one of them referencing the Soviet invasion of Manchuria and the other referencing the atomic bomb. That's the Emperor himself, the man most Japanese at the time viewed as a living god.

Methinks the "all credit to the Soviets" school of anti-A-bomb argument is largely an overreaction to the "A-BOMB F*** YEAH" hyper-pro-Americanism.

 

[Alex1guy]

It's in an older edition of Killing Hope that I read.

Here's one of Blum's essays. He calls it "the first act of the Cold War."

http://killinghope.org/essays6/abomb.htm

I actually gave Blum's book a decent review on Amazon because it did include unpleasant truths about US behavior in Latin America, but at the same time, it blatantly propagandized in favor of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

While some of this is somewhat compelling that the USA wanted to stick it to the USSR, I read this and find it hard to believe that it was the SOLE reason for authorizing the bombing. The argument that it was nothing but a show of strength seems to ignore other factors like the reality that despite Japan not being in a position to wage war, they by and large seemed determined to try anyway. The attempted coup against the Emperor after the surrender was issued shows that there was a still an element there which sought to continue or literally die trying. I am willing to accept that showing the USSR what the USA had factored into the attacks, but that was a factor among many, not the only one.

Methinks the "all credit to the Soviets" school of anti-A-bomb argument is largely an overreaction to the "A-BOMB F*** YEAH" hyper-pro-Americanism.

I'm inclined to agree here.
__________________

 

[MerryPrankster]

While some of this is somewhat compelling that the USA wanted to stick it to the USSR, I read this and find it hard to believe that it was the SOLE reason for authorizing the bombing. The argument that it was nothing but a show of strength seems to ignore other factors like the reality that despite Japan not being in a position to wage war, they by and large seemed determined to try anyway. The attempted coup against the Emperor after the surrender was issued shows that there was a still an element there which sought to continue or literally die trying. I am willing to accept that showing the USSR what the USA had factored into the attacks, but that was a factor among many, not the only one.

Blum isn't following the evidence to its conclusion, he's got a conclusion in mind and he's trying to defend it. Not that anything's wrong with that (I've done it often enough), but it's in his interest to leave things out that don't support his point.

You could actually make a humanitarian argument that ending the war as quickly as possible kept Soviet gains to a minimum. Fewer people having Communist dictatorships imposed on them.

Imagine a bigger North Korea. The lunacy of jurche might be butterflied away, but it might not if Kim il-Sung's people win the factional fight and get a larger playground to play in.

And then there's a possible North and South Japan that could be another Cold War flashpoint. United Red Korea would (probably) suck for the people living there, but at least a situation where there's a united Communist Korea and a united capitalist Japan lacks a land border where an accident can start a major war.

 

[Mr.J]

Imagine a bigger North Korea. The lunacy of jurche might be butterflied away, but it might not if Kim il-Sung's people win the factional fight and get a larger playground to play in.

I'm pretty sure the US occupied South Korea before we dropped the atomic bomb, or at least that the two events were unrelated. The success of August Storm took us by surprise, and we jumped in to claim part of Korea before the Soviets took it all.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I'm pretty sure the US occupied South Korea before we dropped the atomic bomb, or at least that the two events were unrelated. The success of August Storm took us by surprise, and we jumped in to claim part of Korea before the Soviets took it all.

The Soviets didn't even enter the war until after the first atomic bomb, although I think they would have entered the war on that date regardless due to prior agreements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Korea#End_of_World_War_II_.281939.E2.80.9345.29

My argument is that the longer the war continues, even if it's just a few weeks, the more territory the Soviets will take in Korea.

 

[Cook]

I'm pretty sure the US occupied South Korea before we dropped the atomic bomb, or at least that the two events were unrelated.

The division of Korea had been agreed in discussions between the Soviet and Americans earlier in the year, but American forces did not land in South Korea until after the Japanese surrender.

 

[The Sandman]

My opinion on the matter, based on the materials I've read, is as follows: Soviet entry made Japanese surrender inevitable, the atomic bomb gave the Japanese high command the necessary excuse to do it without throwing away the lives of hundreds of thousands of their soldiers and civilians in an insane attempt to have the Japanese Empire die with honor.

And yes, enough of the leadership was just that batshit insane. You know, kind of like the German leadership who didn't surrender until after their leader shot himself just before the Russians finished overrunning their capital.

Also note that American projections as to Japanese resistance on Kyushu were based on the experience of Okinawa, where by the end of the campaign almost the entire Japanese military force was dead and a significant percentage of the civilian population had gone with it.

And that the US overestimated just how much longer Japan had before it starved to death, especially if the switch to demolishing the rail network had gone through. As it was, Japan was apparently on the edge of a catastrophic famine throughout the first six months or so of the occupation.

Also, you can safely assume that in any scenario where Japan resists for any appreciable length of time beyond where they did historically, most or all of the Allied POWs they held would be dead, along with however many Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Thais, Koreans, Malays and members of any other group under Japanese occupation would have died from starvation and from deliberate atrocities committed by the IJA before their eviction from their conquests.

So do those people have less right to survive than the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Because once you're in a war, the only option you have that even approaches a moral one is to take whatever appears to be the most efficient path to minimize the number of people you kill, maim or brutalize before it ends. Any other discussion of morality in war beyond that is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[Anaxagoras]

So do those people have less right to survive than the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Because once you're in a war, the only option you have that even approaches a moral one is to take whatever appears to be the most efficient path to minimize the number of people you kill, maim or brutalize before it ends. Any other discussion of morality in war beyond that is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Hold this thought until early August, when we will undoubtedly have our traditional annual discussion about the morality of nuking Hiroshima in the Chat forum.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Hold this thought until early August, when we will undoubtedly have our traditional annual discussion about the morality of nuking Hiroshima in the Chat forum.

We're having it now, again, with extra doses of ad hominem attacks.

 

[Aelita]

The revisionist school of Cold War historiography, which is almost exclusively leftist (the only non-socialist adherent I can think of is Murray Rothbard), often treats the atomic bombings of Japan as throwing down the gauntlet against the Soviet Union rather than the stated goal of ending the war without the bloodbath of invasion, and therefore unnecessary and immoral for that reason.

Nice try, but no, because I do not engage the practice of condemning or praising people in abstentia, because it's a useless exercise in scholarly morality. Rather, I am interested in why people are so damned unreasonable about even giving an inch about the necessity of the atomic bombings.

This tells a whole lot more than the stated justifications themselves.

(Revisionist and Soviet apologist William Blum starts out his denunciation of post-1945 US foreign policy with the atomic bombings.)

If you think I'm a racist complicit in mass murderer, I'm perfectly justified in thinking you an anti-American Communist propagandist.

If you're going to condemn people, get what they say right.

I said that people who trot out this narrative, based on racism, to justify certain actions, become complicit to that ideology of racism, and end up falsifying history. I don't give two shits whether you are racist yourself. But you've gotten awfully damn defensive about the idea that the stated justifications for the bombings, and the "bloodbaths" that invasion would cause rely excessively on good old fashioned Yankee racism.

Of course, you're defensive for perfectly understandable reasons. Because if there's any doubt the horrors that Operation Downfall would cause, then the necessity of murdering several hundred thousand innocent civilians in a nuclear holocaust comes into question, and you just can't deal with having supported it.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I said that people who trot out this narrative, based on racism, to justify certain actions, become complicit to that ideology of racism, and end up falsifying history. I don't give two shits whether you are racist yourself. But you've gotten awfully damn defensive about the idea that the stated justifications for the bombings, and the "bloodbaths" that invasion would cause rely excessively on good old fashioned Yankee racism.

Of course, you're defensive for perfectly understandable reasons. Because if there's any doubt the horrors that Operation Downfall would cause, then the necessity of murdering several hundred thousand innocent civilians in a nuclear holocaust comes into question, and you just can't deal with having supported it.

Please explain how you're not the mirror image of a religious fundamentalist who, when their rhetoric causes a backlash, claims it's proof they're right.

You have made personal attacks without proof, not only accusing people of racism, but in your most recent response, moral cowardice. The racist angle is especially ridiculous given the OTL black letter fact examples of the bloodbaths of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the gateways to the Home Islands, and the fact there were Japanese holdouts in various parts of the Pacific until the 1970s.

 

[EnglishCanuck]

Of course, you're defensive for perfectly understandable reasons. Because if there's any doubt the horrors that Operation Downfall would cause, then the necessity of murdering several hundred thousand innocent civilians in a nuclear holocaust comes into question, and you just can't deal with having supported it.

Going to interject here, but the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, killed less on a whole than the rest of the American firebombing/bombing campaign which directly killed over half a million people.

Your numbers are just off.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Rather, I am interested in why people are so damned unreasonable about even giving an inch about the necessity of the atomic bombings.

Bullshit. What you describe as "not giving an inch" is what most people would describe as "not immediately acknowledging Jello_Biafra is right."

You interpret refusal to immediately surrender to your all-consuming righteousness as refusal to acknowledge even the possibility that we're wrong rather than the fact your arguments are simply not very good.

You claim I'm a moral coward unwilling to face the possibility I'm wrong, but I think you're the moral coward unwilling to face the possibility your arguments simply suck and you're not as smart as you think you are.

 

[d32123]

I don't think the traditional narrative is so much racist as it is a desperate attempt to justify the atomic bombings. The idea that the United States may have been in the wrong in that circumstance is too much for some people to handle, and it's quite understandable if you've been brought up to believe that America = the good guys.