WI No A-bombs dropped on Japan
- Thread starter Dunning Kruger
- Start date
Don't make the mistake everyone thinks like you or would do what you would do if you were in their position.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_Incident
Even after the atomic bombings, even after the Soviet invasion of Japan's land empire, there were still people who would rather fight unto Japan's extinction rather than surrender.
I really don't see the Japanese surrendering because of the invasion of Manchuria alone. By mid 1945 Japanese strategy, if you can call it that, was to bleed the US forces when they landed and use the USSR as diplomatic conduit for a negotiated peace. The invasion killed off one part of that plan but the Japanese would still have clung to the hope of inflicting heavy enough casualties on the US to force a negotiated peace. The A-Bombs made it clear that the US didn't need to invade and just barely tipped the balance in favour of the peace faction in Japan.
1)
McNamara is not the best of sources.
And if indiscriminately bombing cities (or towns or villages) constitutes war crimes, then that makes war criminals of every medium and heavy bomber crew in World War 2Its a lot easier to make those kinds of charges now that those veterans are now almost entirely deceased. And when you are talking about not your grandfathers, but your great-great-grandfathers, gone before you or perhaps even your parents were born!
Per the documentary, "The Fog of War' McNamera was on LeMay's operational planning staff for the strategic bombing of Japan in WWII. On camera, he says he is a war criminal for the strategic bombing of Japan. Who am I to argue?
My grandfather died on Iwo Jima. My stepfather fought at Okinawa and expected to be part of Olympic in November. He did not expect to survive.
I personally have no problem with either the strategic bombing or nuclear bombing of Japan. The paradigm was total war. It was only after the advent of nuclear weapons that total war became unacceptable. But just because I dont have a problem with it doesnt mean I am ignorant of its moral implications/perception, accurate or not.
Sabot Cat
Banned
But there was thinking among the military leadership that the blockade and bombing was sufficient.
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons."
-Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman
No coup d'etat would have been necessary if most of the Japanese government didn't support surrender (which they did because the Emperor was seeking peace since months before).
My sources suggest that this warning was issued afterwards.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-24.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexp...ary-resources/truman-leaflets/?flavour=mobile
This would imply it was issued after Hiroshima, which would still apply to Nagasaki. And it's more neutral than my initial post and definitely more so than Common Dreams.
CalBear, the board's resident expert on the Pacific War, doesn't think very highly of the Japanese peace proposals before the atomic bombing.
Furthermore, this is a coup AFTER the bombing and AFTER the Soviet intervention. Imagine how die-hard the Japanese Empire would have been without one or the other.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm
This is the Emperor's surrender. It references the atomic bomb.
Call the bombing immoral if you want, but to claim it had no effect at all is an attempt to make reality fit ideology.
This is the Emperor's surrender. It references the atomic bomb.
Call the bombing immoral if you want, but to claim it had no effect at all is an attempt to make reality fit ideology.
Correct. However, I'm taking the OP to mean the Bomb isn't needed. (It wasn't OTL.)sloreck said:
Immoral IMO not because it cost civilian lives, but because of the cost in friendly aircrews.sloreck said:
No? The Bomb wasn't qualitatively different from the extensive firebombings. The Sovs bein enemies was a fair shock to Japan.sloreck said:
Invasion was unnecessary. Japan was on the brink of famine with blockade alone, & it was pefectly possible to sever her road & rail ties to prevent movement of coal to where it was needed. With winter coming, how long do you think the government could hold on?sloreck said:
Madoc; said:
Indeed. If it turns out it's never used, there's going to be "some 'splainin' to do". (Tho, AIUI, Ricky never actually said that...)I'm less sure about tactical use, seeing the Bomb at that time would have been carried by strategic a/c. Would MacArthur have gotten the okay to bomb China? IDK. With the changed outcome to the Pacific War, would Korea be all-Sov? It might be.Madoc; said:
As for Europe, IMO there's a pretty good chance you get nuclear attack by the USAF some time in the '50s, with LeMay getting his way. Maybe before the Sovs get their Bomb, maybe not. I'm thinking a serious, but comparatively limited, exchange, with, say, Kuibishev & Stalingrad & Leningrad &, IDK, Bonn & Essen or someplace, but not England or the U.S. (IDK if the Sovs had nuclear-tipped sub-launch missiles then.)
Agreed. I suspect the Bomb played a role in the delay, as Byrnes wanted to "frighten" the Sovs.AlienMoonBat said:
Invasion was unnecessary. Japan was on the brink of famine with blockade alone, & it was pefectly possible to sever her road & rail ties to prevent movement of coal to where it was needed. With winter coming, how long do you think the government could hold on?
Whether invasion was necessary or not is irrelevant. The only man who's opinion matters is a little nutter named MacArthur, and he viewed invasion as necessary, so it will happen unless the Japanese surrender quickly, which as MP pointed out is honestly unlikely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AlienMoonBat
No coup d'etat would have been necessary if most of the Japanese government didn't support surrender (which they did because the Emperor was seeking peace since months before).
Precisely. There is a gross misunderstanding of Japans peace initiative before August 1945. The record of both the proposals made to the US representative in Switzerland, the Soviet representative in Moscow, and the policy discussions for those proposals is clear. the government was absolutely not proposing surrender. They were proposing a cease fire, followed by armistice and eventual peace negotiations. Their terms included retention of Japans armed forces, retention of the pre 1941 empire, excluded any compensation to anyone for damages, and implied a gradual withdrawl from China. In short the Japanese goal was to return to the status quo of 1937 with the army intact and the ability to rebuild their navy and air forces as quickly as they could. "Surrender" was neither explicit or implied in anything the cabinet or diplomats proposed.
Originally Posted by AlienMoonBat
No coup d'etat would have been necessary if most of the Japanese government didn't support surrender (which they did because the Emperor was seeking peace since months before).
Precisely. There is a gross misunderstanding of Japans peace initiative before August 1945. The record of both the proposals made to the US representative in Switzerland, the Soviet representative in Moscow, and the policy discussions for those proposals is clear. the government was absolutely not proposing surrender. They were proposing a cease fire, followed by armistice and eventual peace negotiations. Their terms included retention of Japans armed forces, retention of the pre 1941 empire, excluded any compensation to anyone for damages, and implied a gradual withdrawl from China. In short the Japanese goal was to return to the status quo of 1937 with the army intact and the ability to rebuild their navy and air forces as quickly as they could. "Surrender" was neither explicit or implied in anything the cabinet or diplomats proposed.
Truman would get a say.wcv215 said:
This isn't making the Japanese position any clearer. The first proposal Japan made was, indeed, this one. Japan subsequently raised several others. The only irreducible demand was The Throne, & it's not clear to me that even demanded keeping Hirohito.Carl Schwamberger said:
What Japan eventually accepted, IMO, is what she'd have been forced to accept in any case, since the U.S. was not going to concede imperial conquests. Destruction of the Japanese armed forces, IMO, wasn't essential, tho a dramatic change in leadership would be a given. (Given occupation & change in government, IMO, most of the changes achieved postwar could be done anyhow.)
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He wasn't listening only to MacArthur...
MacArthur was going to have his way, much as he had through quite a bit of the Pacific War. He was actively pressing for invasion and refused to change the timeline. His plan was going to go through regardless of what the other officers thought. And there is no evidence that Truman would have suddenly changed his mind and not let him carry his plans out.
Flubber
Banned
No, he wouldn't.
No, he didn't.
Yes, there is. During the Joint Chiefs invasion conference on Hawaii in June, Truman refused to authorize the invasion, despite MacArthur's arguments, only signing off on the continued planning and supply stockpiling. Truman was keeping his options open.
Flubber
Banned
Agreed. A few facts which the revisionists continually choose to ignore are:
- Japan's peace initiatives were the work of Japanese ambassadors in Switzerland and Moscow. They were not the initiative of the government in Tokyo.
- When those ambassadors reported their actions to Tokyo, Tokyo directed changes in the negotiating positions. Changes which, as you note, were completely out of touch with reality and changes which, the ambassador in Moscow especially, argues against vehemently.
- The US, thanks to it's extensive code breaking efforts, was reading the message traffic between Tokyo and her ambassadors in real time and thus had a perfect window into the thinking of the government in Tokyo.
Even after the bombings and the invasion of Manchuria, Japan's first surrender proposal contained language asking that the Emperor's "ancient privileges" be maintained. The State Department quickly saw through that piece of bullshit as it would have given Hirohito veto power over occupation policies, told the Japanese to quit stalling, and Japan's second surrender proposal accepted the Potsdam Declaration in full and without quibbles.
usertron2020
Donor
Why use nukes in a war that the US was winning conventionally in 1950?
Consider the following:
a) Korea was a nation the USA was looking (after Inchon) to re-unite. How is Rhee (or for that matter MacArthur) likely to react to the idea of nuking the largest northern city in the country you are supposedly in the act of "liberating"? If the US sees NK as a Soviet puppet, they are not going to regard their civilian population as they would Japan's.
b) The USA still considered Chiang and his Nationalists in Taiwan to be the legitimate government of China. How are they going to react to the idea of nuking mainland China?
c) If Truman doesn't authorize conventional air strikes to knock out the Yalu River bridges to stop the Chinese Incursion, how can anyone believe he'll authorize first strike nukes on anybody?
1) The speech didn't include "Russia just declared war on us"
Correct. However, I'm taking the OP to mean the Bomb isn't needed. (It wasn't OTL (2).)
Immoral IMO not because it cost civilian lives, but because of the cost in friendly aircrews.
No? The Bomb wasn't qualitatively different from the extensive firebombings. (3) The Sovs being enemies was a fair shock to Japan. (4)
Invasion was unnecessary. Japan was on the brink of famine with blockade alone, & it was pefectly possible to sever her road & rail ties to prevent movement of coal to where it was needed. With winter coming, how long do you think the government could hold on?
I'm less sure about tactical use, seeing the Bomb at that time would have been carried by strategic a/c. Would MacArthur have gotten the okay to bomb China? (7) IDK. With the changed outcome to the Pacific War, would Korea be all-Sov? It might be. (8)
As for Europe, IMO there's a pretty good chance you get nuclear attack by the USAF some time in the '50s, with LeMay getting his way. (9) Maybe before the Sovs get their Bomb, maybe not. I'm thinking a serious, but comparatively limited, exchange, with, say, Kuibishev & Stalingrad & Leningrad &, IDK, Bonn & Essen or someplace, but not England or the U.S. (10) (IDK if the Sovs had nuclear-tipped sub-launch missiles then.) (11)
Agreed. I suspect the Bomb played a role in the delay, as Byrnes wanted to "frighten" the Sovs. (12)
2) And there lies the unbridgeable gap, I suppose. If you have the predilection to believe that at this space of years, nothing today is going to change your mind.
3) Check the morgue for the immediate post-Hiroshima edition of US World and New Report, showing a map of Japan and the effect of 500 B-29s each launching daily atomic bombings of Japan for 30 days.
Remember, no sense of the dangers of radioactive fallout, and no sense of how many of these bombs were available or how quickly they could be produced. Remember Krushchev's boast post-Sputnik about his factories turning out missiles "like sausages"? Its not the reality, its the political perceptions of the populace on both sides that count.And you cannot survive as a nation when every time a single weather reconnaissance plane shows up over the city day or night sends the entire population running for the slit trenches (which is what was happening in the horrific few days between August 7th and the 14th). Firestorms launched by hundreds of aircraft over several days were one thing. Atomic warfare was a whole different world of hurt altogether.
4) True, but it wasn't the "OMG, Russia's in it now, we give, please don't hurt us!" reaction the Soviets liked to pretend it was, either. The Kwangtung Army got slaughtered not because they didn't want to resist, or even because they were strategically surprised, but because it had been stripped of much of its armor, artillery, and aircraft. The hardware was used to launch fruitless offensives in mainland China and Burma, were lost to starvation in isolation island garrisons, recalled to Japan, or were ground up in the Philippines and Okinawa.
5) According to the Japanese Home Minister/Commander of the Eastern Military District (Tokyo and its environs), they were looking at total economic collapse starting in October 1945, one full month before the start of Olympic. Meaning organic resistance would have been impossible beyond kamikazes and destroying ground forces in detail where they were.
And still, the Japanese Supreme War Council (particularly the diehard generals Sugiyama, Anami, Umezu and Admiral Toyoda) was unimpressed. The IJA was not known for its understanding of logistics and modern (post-WWI) warfare.
6) The OP's point is "WI it isn't used?" If the US goes to Olympic and Coronet w/o employing The Bomb, Truman could face impeachment.
7) The call would be Truman's. And if we are talking WWII, Chiang's. If Korea, again, no way does Truman order atomic first strikes on China if he won't even conventionally bomb the Yalu River bridges.
8) The 38th Parallel demarkation was a negotiated line by the Soviets and the Western Allies. If the Soviets try something like that, you might see Austria and Czechoslovakia in NATO.
9) WTF!? Is the USA a junta style military dictatorship in your eyes? With the commander of SAC getting to launch WWIII with little civilian oversight? Or was Dwight David Eisenhower actually a Strangelovian General Jack D. Ripper?
10) Over what issue? The Berlin Airlift?
11) In the event of a US First Strike, the Soviets always had the option of a series of suicide one way missions against the USA using their air pirated B-29/Tu-4's. And no SSGNs/SSBNs in the 40s/early 50s. Warheads were too big.
12) *facepalm* Its called deterrence, not "frighten". It was a fringe benefit from having the Bomb, that's all, no matter what Soviet histories may have tried to claim for their own political benefit. FDR didn't sit down one day in 1942 and say: "Let's blow two billion bucks (1942 dollars!) on a gadget that may not even work on scaring our #1 ally who I personally support to the hilt (Uncle Joe) against the Nazis despite the fact that the Russians may just collapse anyway before the year is out!"
13) Um, there was this guy named Chester Nimitz...
14) Since no one else has said it, I will: The problem with going the "Blockade Route", is that it ignores the fact that the Western Allies were democracies. Whatever the costs, how ever uneconomical the invasion of Japan would be, no way does the Allied leadership tell the people back home that they have decided to sentence the countless numbers of Allied POWs in Japan to certain death, which is what would happen if they are left there without hope of direct rescue. They CANNOT just decide to condemn the heroes of Malaya, Singapore, Burma, Bataan, and Corregidor to die. If they do, "Dewey DOES defeat Truman".
Truman would get a say.
This isn't making the Japanese position any clearer. The first proposal Japan made was, indeed, this one. Japan subsequently raised several others. The only irreducible demand was The Throne, (15) & it's not clear to me that even demanded keeping Hirohito. (16)
What Japan eventually accepted, IMO, is what she'd have been forced to accept in any case, since the U.S. was not going to concede imperial conquests. Destruction of the Japanese armed forces, IMO, wasn't essential, tho a dramatic change in leadership would be a given. (Given occupation & change in government, IMO, most of the changes achieved postwar could be done anyhow.) (17)
15) By everyone, yes. By the guys with the guns? No. They had The Four Conditions, (18) which only both bombs, the Soviet DoW, and Hirohito's own announcement to his cabinet sufficed to change the minds of the remaining senior IJA generals to obey the Emperor and surrender.
16) They did.
17) Disarmament of the Japanese military was an absolute. It was the Japanese postwar government who no longer wanted an "army", "navy", or "air force".
18) One, only Japan could try their own war criminals. Yeah, right.
Two, only Japan could disarm itself. Yeah, right.
Three, no occupation. Even the Japanese Foreign Minister exploded over the outrageous nature of that condition.
Four, Keep the Emperor. Everyone agreed to that.
AFAIK, the only Allied leaders that demanded Hirohito be arrested and tried as a war criminal were in Canberra. But considering what happened to their POWs proportional to their population...
No one can forget that infamous propaganda photo of a Japanese soldier beheading a helpless Australian POW.Truman knew the Bomb would probably work, and the invasion wasn't scheduled until November 1st anyway, so as you say he was keeping his options open. There was still plenty of time yet to see if Trinity would be a success.
FDR needed him, and had a more easy going nature and a lot more self-confidence than Truman, whose natural pugnaciousness led him to pick fights where none were needed. Remember, this guy wound up hating Eisenhower's guts too, and Ike was a guy who got along with everybody this side of Monty.
Yes, Dugout Dougie needed to be slapped down. But FDR didn't need too, and Truman ultimately gave Dougie the rope he needed to hang himself with.
19) Fixed it for you. Remember, much of the "history" written about the events between August 6th and August 15th 1945 has been designed to put the USSR/Russia and Japan in the best possible light, and the USA in the worst. And the more time that goes by since those days, the more the political imperative grows stronger.
20) I think it was more a simple matter of letting the Japanese know that Hirohito could stay, privided that he understood that he would be subject to the orders of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, a command soon to be designated for Douglas MacArthur. IIRC, SecState Byrnes referred to it as "One deity answering to another!"
The Japanese were able to reason it out as being like unto hoe in pre-Meji times when the Emperor was "subject" to the rule of the Shoguns.
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