OK, was it wrong to bomb Japan?

Unlike the Japanese at the time the military was not the ones who got to decide such matters and given that to get the surrender terms we needed it was likely to cost hundreds of thousands of our troops lives and millions of Japaneses lives it was a great call to nuke those cities.

Oh those military experts also was predicting that any invasion would have such large costs in lives.

 

Some did and some did not but we do know that none were in charge and had all the information as we know today.

Now, back to where we were, how would you have garnered the unconditional surrender required so that we could be assured Japan would not rise again as a military power?

 

Actually you only reported one that did not. I have reported at least a half dozen who said the bomb was not necessary.

By waiting and demonstrating the bomb

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No invasion was needed

 

How long do you wait and what do you do if the demonstration fizzles and the Big Six use it as propaganda to rally the people against the US who's bombs don't work?

 

We wait as long as the military experts recommend we wait. If the bomb does not detonate we would do the same thing we would do if the bomb did not detonate over Hiroshima. Continue with the war plans and continue to develop the bomb. Basically I am say we do the exact thing we actually did with one exception. Demonstrate the bomb which is what caused the surrender. You just think it was right to do that to a city full of women and children. The japanese government was not stupid. That bomb could have been demonstrated anywhere and they could have seen they have no choice. The killing of all those civilians was not needed.

 

They never said and you are the guy who is proposing this as few of the generals did so, how long do we wait?

Problem being is that after Hiroshima the Japanese were led to believe that we had an unlimited supply so if we get a dud it shows them that we don't and that half of them don't work. In short, you would prolong the war by giving the Japanese leeadership a huge propaganda victory.

Both
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets that should have been already destroyed by conventioal means. Your 'innocent civillian city' is a canard.

 

I don't believe it was necessary, and I don't believe it ended the war.

 

We wait as long as the generals tell us to wait. That is what we pay them for. They are the experts. A demonstration was needed. You believe it was the right thing to perfrom that demonstration over two cities full of women and children. I believe the same effect could have been achieved on an uninhabited location.

 

The generals never said to wait so, as the only advocate of this method how long do we wait?

I already eplai ed that doing an announced demo was a crapshoot with the downside being years of war with the Japanese in a 'last man last bullet' situation.

So, how long do we wait?

 

The generals never said to drop the bomb. Clearly they advocated another path. They also never never recommended a date for the invasion. Clearly they were ready to wait. We DID do a demonstration. My only recommendation was to change the location.

 

Actually, it took Russia entering the war against the Japanese that got the job done. Like you just said yourself, the first bomb didn't even phase the Japanese. They really didn't even think the bombings were that bad (until a few weeks later, of course). There had been earlier bombings that had killed more people and did more damage to the country. Their military was entrenched along the coasts waiting for an invasion, so the bombings didn't do anything to weaken their homeland defense. They were hoping to get the Russians to agree to mediate a conditional surrender with the US, but once the Russians entered the war, they knew they couldn't hold off an American invasion from the east and a Russian invasion from the west at the same time.

 

And that aircraft would be either ramshackle, and thus easy to shoot down, or a cargo seaplane (the only thing they had that had anywhere near the payload capacity), and thus easy to shoot down.

 

We should nuke em again just to make sure they STILL know not to F-with the USA.

 

An how many years or decades should we had sat off shore while being attack by suicide planes waiting for them to surrender?

Less then the cost in lives of one firebombs raid on Tokyo ended that war and let my father and hundreds of thousands of other men come home and father their children instead of dying on the beaches.

Or agreeing to a peace that would had met another major war in ten years or so.

 

The generals never advocated waiting and it is not a military decision but rather a political one anyhow so the length of which is your decision as it is your idea to get unconditional surrender so, how long do we wait?

As for the demo if not announced how is any ody going to know it happened and if announced, the repercussions of a dud a worse than not having one at all. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unannounced so if they were duds nobody would know that Americas big bomb did't work as nothing but a hole in the ground would remain of it.

So, how long do we wait?

 

I don't think any general would have recommended waiting offshore for decades. They also did not recommend the bomb. It is very likely we could have achieved unconditional surrender with a demonstration of the atom bomb and waiting a few weeks.

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We wait as long as the generals suggest we wait. EVERYONE would know of an unannounced demonstration if it was close enough. In fact all of Tokyo would know.

 

I and almost all of the military leaders of the day disagree

 

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of generals, and they most certainly do not have one homogenous opinion. Just because you have a few that may not have advocated using a nuclear weapon, why are you presenting THEIR opinion as if it was the singular opinion of "the generals" ?

 

I listed the most powerful military leaders of the time. These were not just SOME generals and admirals. These are the joint chiefs....the highest ranking military leaders of the day.

 

Being that this is a 70 page thread, could you repost the link to what you are referring ?

 

Here it is
http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/atomicdec.htm

Here is a quote from an admiral suggesting a demonstration





Rear Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy from 1944 to 1945 (and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission), replaced Bard on the Interim Committee after he left government on July 1. Subsequently, Strauss repeatedly stated his belief that the use of the atomic bomb "was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. . . ." (See p. 332, Chapter 26) Strauss recalled:

I proposed to Secretary Forrestal at that time that the weapon should be demonstrated. . . . Primarily, it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate. . . . My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to the Japanese observers, and where its effects would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a good place--satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomaria [sic] trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomaria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood. . . . I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest . . . would [have] laid the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they had been matchsticks, and of course set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities, their fortifications at will. . . . (See p. 333, Chapter 26)

 

Who said that, which of your generals said that and advocated that? How would this be set up and how would you ensure it would work the first time as if it didn't millions would die as Japan would use a faulty bomb to show their people the US had no secret weapon that worked much less an unlimited supply of them?

A blockade is a political decision though not a military one so why would the generals be in charge of deciding when to start it, when to end it and how many children would die from starv ation?

 

See above

Every decision is a political decision. And they should be made following the advice of the greatest military minds available.

 

That link doesn't state that the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed using a nuclear weapon, in fact it says nothing of the sort.

The special assistant to the secretary of the Navy is not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

You are wholly misrepresenting what that document says and who said it.