Would you have used the atom bomb on Japan in WWII if you were Prez?

OK, so you have no plan or that what equates to the USA surrendering to Japan.

Russia overruns Northern China (or ally) and overruns Japan, making it part of the USSR, with millions of Japanese and Chinese killed.

At least you admit you would have no contingency if Japan did not surrender. Can you find any of your military experts who agreed with that? If Japan did not surrender then we do nothing?

 

If Japan didn't surrender in 1945 ...

We wouldn't kill any more Japanese by our direct action, true enough, @ that point in time. However, the Imperial Japanese Army & IJ Navy meant to leave no survivors - POWs, non-Japanese civilians, captured comfort women, anyone @ all - to testify against them after the war. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner_of_war#Empire_of_Japan

"Prisoners of war from China, the United States, Australia, Britain, Canada, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Philippines held by the Japanese armed forces were subject to murder, beatings, summary punishment, brutal treatment, forced labour, medical experimentation, starvation rations, poor medical treatment and cannibalism.[47] The most notorious use of forced labour was in the construction of the Burma–Thailand Death Railway. After 20 March 1943, the Imperial Navy was under orders to execute all prisoners taken at sea.[48]

"According to the findings of the Tokyo Tribunal, the death rate of Western prisoners was 27.1%, seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[49] The death rate of Chinese was much higher. Thus, while 37,583 prisoners from the United Kingdom, Commonwealth, and Dominions, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number for the Chinese was only 56.[50] Of the 27,465 United States Army and United States Army Air Forces POWs in the Pacific Theater, they had a 40.4% death rate.[51] The War Ministry in Tokyo issued an order at the end of the war to kill all surviving POWs.[52]"

(My emphasis - more @ the URL)

The destruction of Manila in the Philippines was just the start, & the IJA & IJN forces in the field had the same orders - fight to the death. Japanese civilians were exhorted to do the same - or @ least to die rather than be captured.

Yah, we - the US - could have simply starved out the Japanese. But the military & government elites - the very people we were trying to capture & punish - would have been the last to suffer. & the Soviets were trying to take as much territory as they could, & the IJA in the field in China was still rampaging through the country. We needed to end that.

Your feelings do you credit, now that WWII is safely over, these 71 years gone by. @ the time though, we needed to crush the resistance, the sooner the better. & so we did.

 

You seem to know so much more about what would have happened than the greatest military leaders this world has ever known. Very impressive

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Why would the imperial family wait forever? They were in no danger after the bombs. Why not continue to hold out? It would not hurt them

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We could have dropped a bomb anywhere to make a,demonstration

 

Like I said (and which you did not deny), the U. S. and Great Britain were completely AT PEACE with Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. On August 1, 1941, the U. S. slapped a total oil and gasoline embargo on Japan.

Brief history lesson: In 1853, American Navy Commodore Perry went barging into Japan with a squadron of warships and "invited" the Japanese to open their ports and their country to "Westernization", trade, etc. The Japanese were happy living their little lives by warring with each other using bows and arrows and swords, but WE decided to open them up... it was good for business!

Thus, in very short order, Japan became a 'modern' society. So much so that by 1905, the Japanese had armed forces that were so "high tech" for the day that they defeated a very well-equipped, modern Russia in a war. Both Russia and Japan had territorial aspirations in Manchuria, and Japan won!
But, oooh! This posed a threat to well-entrenched European and American interests throughout China, Manchuria, and Korea. The Japanese were getting "uppity", and we knew we had to, uh, discourage them in their ambitions.... So, years later, the Brits and Americans decided to make Japan bend to our will. They were by now thoroughly dependent on oil and gasoline imports from the East Indies, as well as other raw materials, including copper and steel from the U. S. Why? Because Japan didn't HAVE any....

Anyway, with "situation-ethics" in play, and Churchill with a incredibly successful Nazi Germany bombing the hell out of England, and starving it, too, the Japan/Germany gambit seemed like the only way that Winnie and Frankie would ever be able to get Americans into the war. Like I said, it worked.

Now, how could YOU not know this...?

Exceptionally hard, indeed! I have often wondered if even Nazi Germany would have been capable of building a working weapon, even if they had had all the required components. It was a horrifically expensive project, involving thousands of the finest minds in the United States.

Well, it was "self-defense" insofar as the survival of Japan as a military power was concerned. They had no oil, no gasoline, and very few raw materials. When we and the Brits slapped a total embargo on them while we were all at PEACE with each other, the Japanese took that as a threat to their very national existence. It was, and they struck out, and they lost it all. Too bad... so sad, for them.... But, yeah, if I had been Truman I'd have dropped both bombs, and if we had needed to drop more of the damned things, I would have authorized that, too. Just because we pushed them into a war with us that they didn't want, it didn't make it right for them to make war on us.

For many reasons, mostly before the beginning of WWII, FDR was a really rotten president, but survival of the United States was, and remains, the most important thing of all!

 

The war was lost but Okinawa did not surrender. Japan launched the greatest number of kamikaze attacks of any battle and they brought out their largest and most formidable battle ship (Yamoto) to attack US force in a sure suicide attack. Approximately 110K Japanese were killed in the battle of Okinawa. The atomic bombs saved lives and convinced Hirohito to declare a surrender and for the Japanese military and citizens to "stand down" which they immediately did.

 

Not according to almost every military expert of the time.....but we do have your opinion. Lol

 

I voted no, but obviously there are no "good" options in winning a war. We're talking about managing hell here.

I start with the vision of two 3 year old girls innocently playing dolls or having a tea party in Hiroshima, and then I think about my own two daughters when they were that age, and I tell myself that purposefully incinerating them is wrong. I don't even want to debate that point. (Can you imagine how much it hurts to be incinerated alive? I only hope it was quick for them, but we all know that there must have been thousands of toddlers like this for whom death was not quick.)

Then I think of all the other utterly innocent people, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 year olds, who died so horribly, some of their parents watching it happen and possibly even against the war, some of them even pro-American from the beginning but powerless to stop Pearl Harbor and the Japanese sweep of Asia. And with that I say that every other option should have been tried instead of nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This argument is countered with stats, which I do accept, showing the higher numbers of Japanese civilians and American soldiers who would have died in an invasion, to which I say, you know what, guys? You're absolutely right. Let's neither invade nor incinerate the toddlers at their little tea parties. I don't think it's a cheap shot to invoke these images. They are real enough.

How to avoid the nukes and the invason? I yield to the military experts here, if such you really are (?). But a blockade on all sides of Japan, allowing food and medicine only to get through (I don't want the toddlers to starve either) seems one reasonable alternative to simply incinerating civilians.

Dropping the bomb in a more remote area or just offshore, inviting the emperor to observe, also seems more reasonable than incinerating children. Maybe successive bombs might have been dropped incrementally more closely to Tokyo. Anything like this seems better.

One thing I can't figure is this: why were TWO bombs, at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, necessary? If it took the bomb to end the war, why wasn't one enough, for god's sake? Is it because they still wouldn't surrender after the first one? Okay. I'll accept that. But let's suppose that the second one had not convinced the Japanese to yield either? What would have been an acceptable number of nukes to convince them? Three? Thirty three? Three hundred thirty three? IIf the first nuke was really justified, morally and strategically, then a thousand more would have been equally justified, if those first 999 weren't enough to convince them.

II close again conceding the point that an invasion would have been even worse, but it seems to me a false choice.

 

That's ridiculous.

 

It is absolutely true based on personal quotes they made after the war......but what do they know? Lol

 

Yes, without any hesitation.

So, what happened to the 2nd Imperial Japanese Army Headquarters at Hiroshima?

Oh, yeah, it was destroyed.

The Japanese people needed to be beat down and totally psychologically demoralized, and the use of nuclear weapons did exactly that.

 

Anybody notice how hard it is to beat down Asians? Recall our beat down of North Korea or Vietnam?

We used WW2 tactics and Japan gave up. A good day in my book.

Frankly, I see little to choose from as to the massive destruction to other Japanese cities vs Hiroshima or Nagasaki. 75 percent of the public in Hiroshima survived.

Had we then had the H bomb, they could have all perished.

 

I looked into this hypothesis a little more, and it actually makes the most sense of the 3 accounts that have been proposed. Primary source material is important to keep in mind, but at the same time some of it can be presumed to be propaganda rather than an accurate account (i.e. the emperor's announcement, the purpose was propaganda). I found a source that made a compelling argument. Logically I am sure it is sound, but let's see if you dispute the facts in it. I will pull out some highlights, but I definitely recommend you read the whole thing: http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

Edit: I guess I'll also summarize since the below is still pretty long. Basically Japan was more devastated by conventional bombs than nuclear bombs, and didn't care about the bombings at high levels to begin with. 66 out of 76 large cities were already destroyed when the nuclear bombs were dropped. All they cared about was favorable surrender terms. They had 2 paths to do this: 1st: use the soviets as a mediator to get terms that aren't too favorable to the US, or inflict such high casualties on invading American forces that America agreed to terms that preserve the emperor. When the Soviets declared war, both of these options were of the table. The military option was off the table because they could not adequately defend against both threats, and they were unprepared for the imminent Soviet invasion. Stalin would have hit them from the west and had few casualties (and Stalin didn't care about casualties anyway), and the Soviets would have conquered Japan had Japan not surrendered when it did.

 

Our military leaders disagreed with your assessment

 

As I recall, the US POL embargo was trying to force Imperial Japan out of China, where they were ravaging through the land & the people. UK & the US (& others) were trying to push Japan out - the atrocities were very ugly - but IJ wasn't budging. China - the Nationalists & the Communists - became our allies in the PTO later. The US embargo was favored by overly zealous Liberals in the US State Dept. (& Commerce Dept., possibly), who didn't understand that the risk was that the militaristic government of IJ might go over the edge & strike back militarily.

IJ was perfectly aware of gunpowder weapons @ the time of Perry's arrival. The samurai didn't like them, as mere peasant amateurs could kill samurai with them. So Japan banned firearms.

The IJ Navy slaughtered the Imperial Russian force because the IJN trained very, very hard. & IJN ships were newish, they trained to British Navy specs, their officers were superior officers - the washout rate @ their naval academy was appallingly high. The IR Navy force was in bad repair, poorly trained, a kind of patched-together force, indifferently officered (as I recall). & IJ typically threw in their reserves @ the kill - I don't think it was necessary this time, the IJN arty & torpedoes were very good & well aimed.

American interests - Yah, if you read The China mirage : the hidden history of American disaster in Asia / James Bradley 1954- author, Little Brown & Company, c2015, 327.51 BRAD, Bradley points out that T. Roosevelt was very taken by the IJ - so much so that the US essentially gave away Korea to IJ - even though Korea was counting on us to protect them from Japan's designs on the peninsula. The prize in the East was the China trade, which did make enormous profits for some old elites in the US - ironic, given the reversals since then.

No, I don't think Nazi Germany could have built nukes, even with the right designs (they miscalculated the amount of U needed for a device, as I recall). But they didn't have the resources, personnel, industrial plant to spare from their conventional war effort - the same was true for IJ. & of course, the US/Allied effort - the Manhattan Project - relied upon a lot of the Jewish & other physics, math, engineering & materials scientists driven away by the Nazis & Fascisti. Ironic, yes.

Maybe God does have a sense of humor, after all.

 

Invision your daughter without you - and invision your daughters as little Chinese girls in the hands of the Japanese army in China.

People make up fantasy realities to suit the ideology they want to claim. You don't care how many Americans were still being killed by Japanese submarine attacks or Kamikazi attacks. You don't care in the slightest what happened to our tens of thousands of POWs. You don't care what happens to hundreds of thousands of Chinese, including little girls. They don't matter either. Nor do you care if Stalin and the USSR overruns Japan, killing millions. Millions and millions could die - and you don't care. You only care that you think we were an evil murderous country using atomic bombs because we are evil. Nothing else, no actual reality matters to most anti-bomb people.

We didn't have 5, 10, 35, 250 atom bombs. We had two. In a few weeks we could have had another and had it delivered.

So tell us, why do you prefer Japanese little girls over Chinese little girls? Why do you think Japanese lives mattered more than American lives? How many millions would you have die in China and Japan, and have Japan subjugated by the USSR and Stalin, because of your singularly vision of little Japanese girls.

We dropped leaflets warning civilians to get out of those war industry cities. They knew we were firebombing even without atomic bombs. Obviously it is appears you opinion that if any enemy shields itself with civilians we have no choice but to concede defeat.

BTW, the Japanese did not drop leaflets warning civilians in Chinese cities or anywhere else to get out before bombing and then slaughtering a city. They wanted the civilians there. They were good for rape and bayonet practice. Your good Japanese whose lives more value to you than anyone else's.

The ways it comes out of the hatred of and belief that the USA is and always has been the most evil country on earth is shocking and in my opinion pure ignorance. It will be the basis of the collapse of the USA - economically and socially, if not militarily. Your message, at it's core, is bigotry against us and our side on behalf of an enemy who attacked us and treated civilians more horrifically than anyone would care to "invision." But that is who prefer not to die as the expense of our allies little girls dying. And that tells your core priorities in my opinion.

Tell us of your images of little Chinese girls being gang raped by Japanese soldiers before bayoneted? I bet that is painful, what do you think? - more painful that the 1 second death of an atomic blast. Oh, and the alternative to atomic bombs was to continue the mass firebombs, which did burn little children to death. Think we shouldn't have done that too? That we should have left all of Japan's war manufacturing they had in cities so not to hurt Japanese little girls?

 

Hirohito did not surrender after the first one. But he did quickly after the second. There was also a discussion about dropping a bomb in the ocean as a demonstration of the weapon but that was rejected because we only had 2 and Hirohito might have taken that demonstration as a sign that we did not have the political will to actually use the bomb on a population center.

 

Everything you just said is a paranoid fantasy in your head that never happened. You act like you knew more than the generals which is laughable

 

Once again, we are here to vote if the A bomb was needed or not.

I say it was.

There is speculation over Russia or the Soviet Union to be precise. Could Russia overrun Japan? Sure. Truman was not for this option. Truman took the option to preserve Japan over having it divided into Soviet dominated lands and USA dominated.

Truman took care of it with the two A bombs. Japan has been far better off than had Stalin been allowed to play his role.

 

The military leaders disagreed with you

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The military leaders disagreed with you

 

Give me a break. I doubt you could come up with a more ridiculous question.

You have too much time on your hands.

 

Just because you have no answer -- and you clearly don't -- doesn't invalidate the question.

 

Thanks for probably the worst post I have seen on this board. I'll let reasonable people here decide if I expressed indifference to Japanes atrocities such as the rape of Nanjing, one of my own in-laws of whom was there and suffered under it, may he rest in peace.

 

This was probably noted above, though the armchair warriors here surely know better than Ike did, right?

DWIGHT EISENHOWER

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

 

I am not clear how many of us were alive when FDR was the president but I know I was. I did not live in the plains states. I lived in an area where war was a daily topic. We had so many workers engaged in war effort, you had to be truly stupid not to see it going on. We had military convoys passing through the SF Bay area. We were making ships here at a furious pace. We had war planes based at the Oakland airport and I could walk there in maybe 30 minutes. It was but 2.6 miles from our home. We had formations of war planes flying over many times. My uncles were in the war.

What did Americans call the Japanese? We called them Japs. We saw them as like some of you see the North Koreans. We clearly did not like them. Today things are different, for us at least. I think this many years later, we and Japan shall never fight each other again. But the rage in the heart of America at the Japanese. And FDR had jailed our local Japanese.

It is interesting when people assume some theory that it was actually Russia's fault that the Japanese surrendered. I know what Stalin was doing. Truman also was the new president and he had the military mind that FDR lacked. But FDR wanted the nuclear bombs. For those of you able to visit the Truman President library, I urge you to get their in the early AM and soak it up. There is so much information and a lot of it will shock you as much as it shocked me. I had not known all that much about the way Truman is the father of us being in the Vietnam war. He never put in troops, but took part in events in Vietnam. It's there to read up on at the Truman library.

 

I guess I need to apologize. The answer to your question is "Hell Yes" and it is so obvious that a blind man could see it in a minute.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume your question was rhetorical, thus did not require an actual answer.