Schoolchildren of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made long strands of paper cranes for New Yorkers after 9/11. I felt touched by the gesture.
https://www.911memorial.org/connect/blog/japanese-school-children-fold-1000-origami-cranes-sign-peace
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Honestly, I don’t know if they have the legal right to do so (I’m leaning towards yes) or that they would, especially under the current administration.
None of what you listed necessisates the use of such overwhelming force. The emperor was pushing for surrender and had made overtures, some of his generals refused. There were other ways.
The only plausible reason they might have stopped fighting is Russians might have gotten involved.
They were nearly there and THAT is the reason we dropped two bombs on Japan. Truman wanted to send a message and it got through loud and clear.
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But the Emperor didn’t exert control over anyone who mattered. In fact the day before the surrender speech was to be given, there was a failed coup to kidnap him and continue the war. All despite 2 atomic bombings already.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/08/15/national/aug-15-japans-longest-day-still-resonates/
Anything that delayed ending the war meant more civilian casualties piling on en masse. Also giving the Russians a warning wasn’t a bad thing either. If we invaded the Japanese Southern/Western Islands, the USSR was going to invade Hokkaido. We would end up with a divided Japan.
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Sure, but if he had not been a problem, they might not have tried the coup, yeah?
The bomb DID kill civilians en masse! And it health consequences for decades to come.
Part of the reason we got into the cold war in the first place. The Soviets were well aware that we (and the Germans) had a program. Again, here, there were alternatives to what happened that led to the CW.
The reality is that there were alternatives, there always are. We do have to come to terms and deal with what’s happened in fact, but that doesn’t stop us from also understanding that what happened was not the only possibility of what could have happened. The atomic weapons could still very much be a threat to our world, especially right now, with so many pro-violence people coming to power around the world. There is a reason we are at 100 seconds to midnight.
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By the time both atomic bombs were dropped, the generals had little choice but defer to the Emperor. The strategy of inflicting allied casualties to bring the US to the table for a negotiated peace couldn’t remotely be considered possible by then. But even then there were elements which wanted to continue the war, and they almost got their way.
Still paled in comparison to millions more dead by dragging the war on for longer. The lesser of two evils by a long shot.
Not many which were particularly good for the rest of the world.
There was no way the science and technology of atomic weapons were going to be kept under wraps. All sides of WWII were working on it and stealing from each other in one form or another.
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I have to agree with you that overall war is hell and it was a necessary evil. The bombs were a devastating blow, but it also prevented the loss of life on both sides, and Japan’s infrastructure. (Remember our fire bombing raids, while not as lethal, were also highly destructive.)
I have also read opinions that the documented destruction of these rather small nuclear bombs served as a stark reminder of how devastating they are and why they haven’t been used in anger since, especially the much larger ones developed later. Things like this tend to be all hypothetical and hard to really understand their impact until you are confronted with the images of the destruction.
At least we did offer a formal apology (Which is more than we can say about Japan, who refuses to this day to acknowledge they did anything wrong in WWII. They don’t even mention it in their schools.)
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That seems to be where the argument breaks down for the case against the use of the bombs in favor of some unnamed alternative. If we hadn’t done X, shouldn’t the costs of A,B, and C be acknowledge and taken into account?
We knew through Magic decrypts that even the most pro “peace” factions within the Japanese government lacked any sort of authority to countermand the Imperial Navy & weren’t seeking a surrender at all, but a negotiated armistice that would have kept all Imperial leadership in place and retained some conquered territory. So, was that an acceptable outcome of the war? If one argues that it was acceptable, doesn’t one also have to agree that a negotiated armistice with Germany would have been acceptable where the Nazis retained their leadership and some amount of conquered territory?
Should we have continued with strategic bombing and blockade, which would have resulted in no fewer than 1m Japanese deaths and wouldn’t have ended the war until 1946 under the best estimates at the time?
Should we have invaded and likely repeated the experience at Okinawa many, many times over?
Or, should be have sailed home after Japan’s navy was effectively eliminated and no longer able to project any force, leaving any conquered territory to the mercy of Japan and the Soviets?
I’m just not sure one can make a principled argument against the use of the bombs without addressing the actual alternatives on the table in 1945.
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On a personal note, as horrifying as the film Grave of the Fireflies is to watch, it was in many ways an understatement as to what was going on.
My in-laws were adolescents when the war ended.
They remember being on the verge of starvation and having to take shelter from American bombing. Osaka (where they both grew up) was pretty much leveled with the exception of the castle in the center.
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Media can’t really fully convey the full horror of things like war. The best they can do is offer a glimpse.
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We don’t know either way, so it’s historical speculation. There can be arguments made on both sides of that.
Again, we don’t know. There is no doubt that Stalin was incredibly destructive, most especially to Soviet citizens, but we don’t know if FDRs direct engagement strategy could have born fruit, because once Truman was president, he went full on tilt against communism.
Not having an arms race after the war might have helped, in that regard.
I just don’t agree.
Often invoked, but it’s speculation, I’d still argue.
The firebombing of Tokyo did kill more (I think), as did Dresden.
Despite having a pacifist constitution, we wrapped up trials for war crimes quickly in Japan, especially after the Communists in China won. Same in Germany. We brought people who were war criminals back into positions of power out of expediency. This has most certainly muddied relations between Japan and it’s neighbors since.
Yes, this very much is the case. This is hard to watch, but worth it. It speaks pretty directly to you in laws recollections:
I disagree. American films and TV tend to sugar coat things like that (especially those that involve the US), but other countries tend to be less likely to try and spoon feed their audiences. Both Son of Saul and Come and See (Hungarian and Soviet era Belarusian respectively) are pretty unflinching and brutal films. For some reason, Americans need to have resolution and happy endings, when there is often little of that in war. I think that if we had a more accurate picture of such things, we might be less willing to go bomb the shit out of other nations.
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I don’t follow how that is responsive or contradictory to what I pointed out was one of the options, indeed the only option Japan was willing to accept at the time (which was necessarily paired with retaining their military and retention of some conquered territory).
But to the point I raised above, would you have found an armistice acceptable with Nazi Germany that left wartime leadership intact and allowed them retain some conquered territory? I most definitely would not, but you may disagree.
The use of bombs against Japan didn’t cause an arms race. The existence of nuclear weapons along with some other things did. Whether we dropped the bombs or not, the Soviets knew about the weapons, had pretty fully infiltrated the labs and facilities that produced them, and would have developed their own in the same timeline.
I don’t think there is a reasonable argument that Stalin would somehow have lost interest in developing a bomb if we hadn’t dropped them first, as the Red Army’s race to seize German nuclear scientists and equipment in spring of '45 demonstrates.
It is in part, but it’s not baseless speculation. It’s based on years of experience fighting the Japanese across the Pacific, and the known consequences of firebombing to date. We knew at the time a great deal about the internal discussion among Japanese leadership, and we knew that “surrender” was nowhere near being on the table, and up to the moment the bombs dropped and the Soviets invaded, most of their leaders with actual control over the military still believed in tennōzan as their path to an armistice.
What alternative do you posit would have resulted in less loss of life with acceptable terms?
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We know the rate at which people were dying from blockade induced famine and what the firebombing was doing to the population. We killed more people in one raid over Tokyo than both atomic bombings. But it was the atomic bombings which scared the living shit out of the Japanese generals. In the grand scheme of things, I am not seeing the atomic bombings as the worse alternative to a few million more dead from starvation and a divided Japan.
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Stalin run across China and Korea practically put Mao in power and created North Korea. The US didn’t even take those events seriously until the USSR forced the issue on us.
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Stalin had already stolen the tech for the bomb while the Manhattan project was still going on. An arms race was inevitable. It was going on while the war was underway. The US came late to the atomic weapons race. It only won by outspending everyone else.
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Yes, the leadership was taken out, but with the start of CW hostilities, there was plenty of mid-level nazis who remained in positions of power, and that was on both sides of the wall. That’s not insignificant. Denazification and deAuthoritarianization(?) was stopped pretty quickly in both cases. Not to mention in the case of Germany, returning Jews were often treated as second class citizens in the DP camps (and survivors from central Europe, who came home to a new wave of pogroms) were much of the population of the DP camps in Germany. The surrounding population was incredibly hostile to Jewish people, while they welcomed others who aligned with the Nazis during the war. We also blocked Jews and welcomed former nazis, primarily so we could get more weapons of mass destruction.
Not too long ago, @Wanderfound (I think) posted an article about an American man who went to help in the DP camps, and was shocked at just how poorly people who had literally just survived a genocide were being treated… I can’t find it now, but it shows just how hostile the American and British governments were to Jewish refugees.
It did, I’d argue. it showed the Soviets what we had, and we had more than one. They knew we were working on it, as were the Germans, and they knew that dropping 2 meant we had more or could make more. This kicked their program into higher gear as the CW heated up, and then once they got their bomb, we built more. You can’t disconnect the CW geopolitical landscape from how the war ended. Much like Stalin’s mechanations in Eastern Europe galvanized US/British responses and confirmed their fears, us dropping not one, but two bombs did the same for Stalin.
I agree, but I think it ended any opportunity for a different path, but same with Stalin’s intervention into Eastern Europe. Both sides were amped up and paranoid, and high from having won the war.
We did the same, let’s not forget.
Sure, but the population of Japan was not happy with what was happening. They were losing family, were going hungry already, and that’s an unpredictable situation. I think we very much overstate just how “unified” the japanese people were.
Maybe, but again, leadership can be upended in the right conditions by people who are tired of fighting.
Well, the Japanese were trying to negotiate with the Russians that summer (who stalled the talks in order to get into position in Asia), in fact, the US government was aware of that, and they did not seek out a settlement anyway.
In fact, this article lays down the argument that the “no surrender” on the side of Japanese is largely a myth, as well as that the numbers Truman promoted after the war were not accurate (according to the Army’s own estimates at the time):
[ETA] Here is a second link, and then a third (sorry, not trying to be a jerk here, just offer relevant information from historians), from a historian on these issues as well:
Truman ACTIVELY turned down alternatives to the bomb, as these show.
And that’s not great, either. But again, see the above article on numbers… it also discusses alternatives that were rejected.
Stalin provided aid, but the Republicans were already on the run, and Mao only consolidated power in 49…
Again, I disagree. I’m aware this was happening during the war, but a different set of tactics that wasn’t aimed directly at saber rattling with the Soviets, but instead was direct diplomatic engagement might have been more productive. Hell, Nixon was able to negotiate with the Soviets and that had a pretty good impact until Cold War II under Carter/Reagan.
If there is one thing I know, after 10+ years of studying history is that nothing is inevitable, it’s always a product of human choices. Now, those choices are often not easy or they might not be many good choices, but there are always choices. We can only describe what happened when the choices that were made bore fruit, but if we actual plan to learn from those mistakes, I’d argue that calling them inevitable isn’t particularly helpful.
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Thanks for the recommendations, I hadn’t heard of them before. I have seen part of Katyń (2007), about the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in 1940, and it is both grim and brutal
I do think some US media has gotten things right in some ways, such as Saving Private Ryan for the D-Day landing scene. I have heard more than one Marine say Jarhead was very accurate. And one of my personal favorites was We Were Soldiers because it showed not just fairly realistic combat, but it showed the perspective of the battle from the enemy, including a scene that humanized them as more or less being just like the US soldiers, as well as the aftermath of what happened at home with the fallout of the family learning of the death of their husband/son, etc. It attempted to make a war movie that is more that just about action and killing the bad guys, and reflect on the human costs of war.
But back to my point, no matter how realistic or brutal or accurate a depiction is, even if it makes us uncomfortable or sick or impacts us, it is still just a glimpse of what it would be like to live though something horrible like that. Few horrible ordeals wraps up in about 2 hours. We are in no actual danger or pain. Depending what we are talking about these things could last days, or weeks, or even years. We can read the stories and journals of those who experienced, and view the footage filmed of it, but I think some things are impossible to fully understand with out actually experiencing it.
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I’m sorry, but your first response doesn’t actually answer my question. So I’ll be more direct: would you have found an armistice with Nazi Germany acceptable that retained Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Eichmann and rest of the top-tier gentleman in power while allowing them to retain portions of territory it had conquered.
Again, my answer is an absolute and firm “no.”
I’m not intending to be confrontational, but your argument is contradicted by the actual facts of how & when the Soviets made obtaining nuclear weapons. The knew quite well the stage of our development and capability from GRU spies well before the bombs were dropped, and had made the seizure of Nazi scientists and equipment to top priority exceeding all other as well.
Well, yeah, showing that use of atomic weapons was not responsible for a literal race for their development.
I doubt very much whether the population was “happy” with what was happening, either, but the outcome was clear.
None of those conditions were present in Japan. It’s hard for us in the 20th century to wrap our heads around what a society as hierarchical and focused on honor is willing to tolerate and fight for, but the evidence of what they actually were willing to tolerate and fight for is there.
Indeed there were elements within the foreign service and government who were seeking an armistice (NOT a surrender), which we knew from Magic intercepts. We also knew from Magic intercepts that the “peace faction” did not actually hold any authority over the Army of Navy, were a distinct minority of the government, and were not willing to accept anything close to terms that we would find acceptable.
With respect to your linked articles, I’m afraid I can’t take much of the first link serious when it puts forth the notion that an invasion of Japan would cost around 46,000 casualties. One need not accept the 1m figure used to justify the bombs to see that this is ludicrous on its face. The battle of Okinawa cost something on the order of 200k Japanese deaths alone, and strains credulity to suggest that mainland Japan would accept invasion and occupation any more readily than Okinawa. Arguments that the Japanese population and army would have accepted defeat as inevitable and resisted less don’t hold water, given that defeat was inevitable for Japan since at least late '44, and probably earlier.
The second links is grasping at straws, given that it argues that the use of the bombs was racially motivated. That’s nonsense, to put a fine point on it. The plan during the whole development of the bombs was to use it against Germany. Only the fact that it would have been in pretty bad taste to use them on Berlin three months after Germany’s surrender prevented that.
The third article wholly ignores what we knew of Japan’s actual bottom line for terms of an armistice, none of which were acceptable to us or constituted “surrender.” Again, you may disagree with me about whether it would have been acceptable to allow all Japanese leadership to remain in place and allow them to retain conquered territory, and if so we’ll just have to let our difference on that remain.
You’ll forgive pedantry (game recognizes game), but these were strategic decisions, not tactical.
(and, to clarify, I don’t take any argument you’ve offered as being a jerk; we’re disagreeing about something upon which reasonable people can disagree)
Yeah, that is pretty brutal, for sure. It’s not an unflinching movie in that respect. Schindler’s List is pretty brutal too, but compare SPR to Stalingrad… worlds apart.
I’ve not seen that, but have heard good things, because of the perspectives. That’s certainly a step up in how Hollywood often soft peddles our wars, and refuses to give the other side any sort of voice that matters.
No argument from me there.
Yep, I do agree there too. I do think media can help us to understand them better than we do otherwise, though.
Thanks @Wanderfound. I kept meaning to bookmark to possibly assign for a class reading.
No, so we agree there.
I’m saying that the fact of the war time arms race did not preclude alternatives to the postwar arms race.
Again, we did that as well.
Showing that we had them, and more than one, and that we were fully aware of the Soviet’s direction toward Japan, and that it was a message to the Soviets because of the race to nuclear power during the war does, I’d argue.
By which I assume you mean they were losing? Yes, I think most people except the most blinkered and bellicose were well aware of that by 1945.
I think that view of the Japanese is more than a bit overstated. Hierarchies from the outside often seem more rigid and stable than they often actually are.
But many people had no choice about fighting, so we don’t know about their “choices” with regards to fighting, only that they did fight. It’s true that many, especially early on were enthusiastic, but the Japanese had just as much agency and ability to think and reason as American GIs did, who also fought for a variety of reasons, some who were drafted, and some who joined up.
So, in other words, you’re not going to read it. Okay. If you don’t agree with them, then go argument with the historians who wrote them, perhaps, who were quoting the military numbers?
You don’t think the death toll from Okinawa wouldn’t shape people’s mindsets?
I think that there was racism aimed at the Japanese is inarguable. It was in our cartoons, even.
American was and remains a white supremacist society. We were putting Japanese Americans in internment camps, not Japanese, but Japanese Americans, people who were fully citizens and had no loyalty to japan.
However we define them, they had consequences and the paranoia (on both sides) led to pretty blinkered decision making. Stalin was (not entirely wrongly) concerned about an invasion of the Soviet union, while the US/GB were concerned about a soviet take over of EAstern Europe (again, not wrong on their part).
Agreed.
It’s intended as part one of a longer series, BTW. And Yasha also wrote Surveillance Valley.
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I read Atina Grossman’s German’s Jews, and Allies a few years back which focuses on this particular issue. Reading that (and this article) is a good reminder that what we think we know about the second world war is often wrong and mediated through American mass culture which regularly ignores the complexity of the war and the post war period.
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No, not just losing, but lost. And your characterization of only the most blinkered or bellicose nor accepting of that before by 1945 might not be the most well-founded when it comes Japanese society at the time. Defeat was literally unimaginable for most Japanese of the time, as demonstrated by an enormous body of post-war oral histories.
Which brings us to.
This isn’t exactly unexplored territory, though. As I pointed out above, it is really difficult for us to understand a militarized honor culture like Imperial Japan because it’s hard to accept something so outside or experience. But the generation of soldiers had been heavily indoctrinated in the revitalized Bushidō code, and viewed defeat as impossible so long as they displayed fighting spirit, not wholly unlike the indoctrination by the Nazis of the German population.
That’s why Japanese soldiers literally swore to die for the emperor, engaged in hopeless suicide charges instead of changing tactics, and engaged in kamikaze attacks that horrified US forces as alien and unthinkable.
In fact I did read it, which is how I was aware of the 46,000 claim. That wasn’t just a lucky guess. And because I read it, I can tell you that at the author is not a historian, doesn’t provide any citations for his claim or methodology. While this piece does appear on the first page of a Google search, it is neither history nor supported by history.
Of course not, but that’s the argument I’m disputing. You argued that dropping the bombs caused the arms race, which is not only unsupported but contradicted by the fact the literal race was already well underway by both sides.
Of course that is indisputable. That is not what the piece is arguing, however; it is arguing that the decision to use the bombs was motivated by racism. That’s the nonsensical part. Our society is/was racist, but that was no more the motivation than it was for firebombing or island hopping or the invasion of the Philippines.
Again, this is fairly well trod by the actual historians who studied the motivations and thinking of the time and we don’t have guess. It absolutely figured in, but had the opposite effect people in our position would expect. It hardened determination, it deepened most of the population’s determination to defend the home islands, and it emphasized the honor code that they had been indoctrinated with for a generation. Richard Frank and Max Hastings have written some great popular histories recently that do a great job of exploring these motivations at the end of the war, if you’re interested.
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