WI No A-bombs dropped on Japan

[MerryPrankster]

Re: use of the A-Bomb in Korea, there are ways to use an A-Bomb that don't involve city-destroying. Perhaps hitting somewhere in the supply chain of the North Korean forces besieging the UN troops in Pusan.

A rail hub would be most effective (and that would probably mean hitting a city), but if there're some particularly big and important bridges or especially large supply dumps, that's something else.

 

[The Red]

There is no circumstance in which the invasion of Manchuria alone would secure Japanese surrender.

Except it wasn't the invasion of Manchuria alone, at the same time the Soviets had landed on the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin, and after occupying those territories they would have moved across the La Perouse Strait to Hokkaido, and eventually across the Tsugaru Strait to Honshu. After putting all their eggs in the Kyushu basket, you're going to have a repeat of the last days of the Reich, with old men and young boys going up against the Red Army, except this time there are no Panzerfausts to even give them the slightest advantage.

So it's a case of choose your occupier, Stalin, or Truman?

Given this consideration it's clear why the majority of contemporary Japanese documents give either primacy, or at least equality, to the Soviet invasion in facilitating Japan's surrender.

 

[Dunning Kruger]

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?

I think that would not resist the temptation to test a bomb in a combat situation.

a & b) If atomic weapons are held in the same regard as strategic bombing in WWII, they would probably be for it assuming it defeated their adversary. That is the gist of my OP. Do atomic weapons acheive the same level of moral abhorrance without having the evidence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to point to?

c) Truman didnt want to escalate the war, which of course atomic attacks would do. Is he more willing to do so without the tangible evidence of their consequences?

I suspect the use of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved the world from a much more destructive nuclear war in 1951, 1962, or some other date. But that is not a strong opinion of mine.

However, I am certain there is no consensus regarding their influence on ending the war with Japan.

 

[Aley]

Re: use of the A-Bomb in Korea, there are ways to use an A-Bomb that don't involve city-destroying. Perhaps hitting somewhere in the supply chain of the North Korean forces besieging the UN troops in Pusan.

A rail hub would be most effective (and that would probably mean hitting a city), but if there're some particularly big and important bridges or especially large supply dumps, that's something else.

On the other hand the use of the first atomic bomb meant and check its validity, that is the quickest capture areas where it has been used.

 

[Madoc]

Interesting to see so many of the same points about the Bombings restated here. Especially the revisionist ones about the Bombs being unnecessary due to Japan's "imminent" collapse and the Bombs only being used to scare the Soviets.

One thing which has been missed thus far however, is the effect on the Chinese were the war to continue on.

While the IJA occupied other countries, it was primarily in China where they displayed the most brutality toward the conquered peoples. A Chinese government account I read of that occupation estimated that the Japanese went through 1,000,000 Chinese a month, on average, for every month they occupied China.

A Million a month.

Now, no one had or has a good handle on just how many Chinese there were in China during the 1930s and 1940s and thus no one has a really good handle on just how many Chinese the Japanese killed or caused to die. But there were an awful lot Chinese in China even back then. So, a million a month is "do-able." It's been long enough since I read this account that I don't recall whether that was derived from the total estimated war dead divided by the total number of months Japan occupied China - and thus spread out the numbers from individual attrocities (the Rape of Nanking, etc.,.) across the entire occupation - or whether it was an actual monthly tally as each month occured.

And then there's the fact that China had and has a vested interest in making the worst of the Japanese occupation. Combine that with the typical Communist tendancy to overinflate their numbers and perhaps a million a month is a bit much.

But, even knocking it down to a mere 100,000 a month still presents an appalling situation.

China was a major ally during the war and it was the only major ally to suffer occupation and exposure of its civilian population. The Japanese were decidedly brutal in their treatment of the Chinese and showed no sign of letting up on that as the war progressed.

So, for every day the war lingered on more Chinese civlians would die. A lot more. In OTL that's one of the more irrefutable arguments for the use of the Bombs as their use greatly shortened the suffering and deaths of the Chinese people.

In this ATL, those mounting deaths would be a constant pressure upon the Allies to do something to end the war sooner than later.

Whether this manifested in giving the time for a blockade to work whilst the Soviets carved out an eastern expansion to the western expansion they'd just finished carving or whether it spurred Olympic and Coronet to launch on schedule is a good subject for debate.

 

[Curiousone]

...
China was a major ally during the war and it was the only major ally to suffer occupation and exposure of its civilian population. The Japanese were decidedly brutal in their treatment of the Chinese and showed no sign of letting up on that as the war progressed.

Erm the Soviet Union? 20 Million dead, Belorussia, Ukraine, much of Russia proper over-run?

Poland if that's a major enough ally for you. Something like 1 in 7 of the prewar population killed, all the intelligentsia, people in major positions in society eliminated.

 

[tchizek]

Erm the Soviet Union? 20 Million dead, Belorussia, Ukraine, much of Russia proper over-run?

Poland if that's a major enough ally for you. Something like 1 in 7 of the prewar population killed, all the intelligentsia, people in major positions in society eliminated.

If you believe official Chinese numbers the Soviet casualties would be 20 months of the Japanese occupation. Even if you cut it in half it would be 40 months, and everyone needs to remember that the Japanese occupation started in 1932.

Plus more of the heartland of China was overrun than Russia, everyone in the west and in Russia sees the China theater as a sideshow but it was larger, longer and had more casualties than all of Europe combined.

 

[Curiousone]

If you believe official Chinese numbers the Soviet casualties would be 20 months of the Japanese occupation. Even if you cut it in half it would be 40 months, and everyone needs to remember that the Japanese occupation started in 1932.

Plus more of the heartland of China was overrun than Russia, everyone in the west and in Russia sees the China theater as a sideshow but it was larger, longer and had more casualties than all of Europe combined.

I'd compare casualties to their respective proportion of population. A basic wiki [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Charts_and_graphs]
has it at 13.6-14.2 % of the Soviet pre-1939 population & 1.93-3.86% of the pre-1939 Chinese population. The 20 months worth you describe doesn't seem to jive with the numbers there. Military casualties as well being vastly greater on the Eastern front than the Western & Pacific combined http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WW2.gif.

 

[Clandango]

150,000–246,000 more people would be alive immediately afterwards, and the United States would be exempt from the war crime(s) associated with dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I think the Koreans might drop charges on their part, as a seventh of those who died were slave laborers. Tens of thousands would have been Japanese soldiers as well.

 

[MerryPrankster]

On the other hand the use of the first atomic bomb meant and check its validity, that is the quickest capture areas where it has been used.

So you think the Bomb would have been used relatively close to the front lines rather than striking targets UN forces wouldn't get to for months?

 

[MerryPrankster]

Interesting to see so many of the same points about the Bombings restated here. Especially the revisionist ones about the Bombs being unnecessary due to Japan's "imminent" collapse and the Bombs only being used to scare the Soviets.

One thing which has been missed thus far however, is the effect on the Chinese were the war to continue on.

MORE...

THANK YOU!

 

[Clandango]

THANK YOU!

It is the same in real life conversations, with the others being even harder to convince. For the record, I agree with Paul Fussel in his essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb", part of which mentioned the relief that he and other soldiers felt when they learned they would not be facing what propaganda (And military figures on both sides) labeled as millions of people willing to fight for the death, and with a single pilot's life being gladly traded to sink a ship with hundreds aboard.

 

[MerryPrankster]

So assuming the war lasts another four months or so, what kind of effect would there be on China?

 

[The Red]

So, for every day the war lingered on more Chinese civlians would die.

Even if the Soviet intervention didn't facilitate the Japanese surrender on it's own, it would rapidly spell the death of the Japanese occupation of China and Korea. After twelve days of relentless advance the Soviets had reached as far south as Mukden, had landed in Northern Korea, and had been forced to stop due to logistical exhaustion, the Kwantung Army was in a state of complete collapse, with half of its strength cut off, captured or killed. It would only be a matter of weeks before resupply and then pushing deep into the Chinese interior, possibly meeting the KMT in Shanghai by the end of the year.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Even if the Soviet intervention didn't facilitate the Japanese surrender on it's own, it would rapidly spell the death of the Japanese occupation of China and Korea. After twelve days of relentless advance the Soviets had reached as far south as Mukden, had landed in Northern Korea, and had been forced to stop due to logistical exhaustion, the Kwantung Army was in a state of complete collapse, with half of its strength cut off, captured or killed. It would only be a matter of weeks before resupply and then pushing deep into the Chinese interior, possibly meeting the KMT in Shanghai by the end of the year.

That's still several months, with the war more intensified.

 

[John Farson]

Even if the Soviet intervention didn't facilitate the Japanese surrender on it's own, it would rapidly spell the death of the Japanese occupation of China and Korea. After twelve days of relentless advance the Soviets had reached as far south as Mukden, had landed in Northern Korea, and had been forced to stop due to logistical exhaustion, the Kwantung Army was in a state of complete collapse, with half of its strength cut off, captured or killed. It would only be a matter of weeks before resupply and then pushing deep into the Chinese interior, possibly meeting the KMT in Shanghai by the end of the year.

That's still another four months of war in China, though, with the possibility of multiple Manilas as the Red Army and KMT liberate the major cities...

EDIT: Shoot, got ninja'ed by MerryPrankster.

 

[MerryPrankster]

That's still another four months of war in China, though, with the possibility of multiple Manilas as the Red Army and KMT liberate the major cities...

EDIT: Shoot, got ninja'ed by MerryPrankster.

You still added something substantial--the possibility the Japanese would go berserk on the civilian population when it was clear they were losing.

Plus more deaths among the Soviets, the KMT, and the ChiComs (if they bother to participate) than OTL.

 

[Clandango]

So assuming the war lasts another four months or so, what kind of effect would there be on China?

Depends. How many Chinese prisoners in Japan, Korea, China, and the other area (The Chinese were spread out everywhere) would there be at the time of the Allied invasion? I read that the Japanese were going to execute every single prisoner they had the moment the invasion began.

 

[MerryPrankster]

Depends. How many Chinese prisoners in Japan, Korea, China, and the other area (The Chinese were spread out everywhere) would there be at the time of the Allied invasion? I read that the Japanese were going to execute every single prisoner they had the moment the invasion began.

I'd heard they were going to execute prisoners in the event of invasion of the Home Islands, but I thought it would be just in Japan itself.

Still, that'd be bad enough.

 

[The Red]

That's still another four months of war in China, though, with the possibility of multiple Manilas as the Red Army and KMT liberate the major cities...

Admittedly that would be a concern, the Japanese who knew that it was far too late to run away from the Red Army's advance or were already encircled did take it out on the civilian population (there's actually a Chinese film about this, which includes scenes of Type-95's going up against T-34's) however the focus was also on getting away as quickly as possible if they still could (one of the major causes of death on the Japanese side was wounded soldiers being abandoned) combined with the complete collapse of their supply chain, and command being beheaded with the Soviet capture of the Kwantung High Command at Hsinking, the capacity for mass atrocities would be greatly reduced with Mao increasing his control of the countryside and the Red Army and the KMT rapidly liberating the cities and ports.