I have lots of Japanese family and friends, and none of them understand the horrors of WW2. As far as they were taught, America just randomly dropped nukes on them. They’re mad because they think of Japan as a victim, not a monster that needed to be stopped. They raped and pillaged everyone who wasn’t Japanese.
At least Germany teaches their kids about their atrocities in hopes that they never repeat it.
Japan was definitely a monster that needed to be stopped. But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.
Well. The war took 20.000 lives daily. The bombs took about 140k if i recall right.
If the war lasted 7 more days it would even out. The bombs ended it instantly.
The Japanese doctrine was to fight to the very last man, woman and child.
The Japanese are like everyone else. Only more. They had some powerful cultural settings to be able to do what they did.
My problem with this account is I read it in an American text book.
I’m not saying it false. I just have doubts.
Most of the American history revolves around how the Japanese treated the Prisoners of War, who were all men.
Ask the Koreans or Chinese what they thought about the Japanese occupation of their countries a hundred years ago.
This right here, there is a reason for a lot of the hate towards Japan in East and Southeast Asia, their reputation in the world today has drowned a lot of that out but it still happened and the crimes of imperial Japan are on the same level of cruelty as many crimes committed in the Holocaust some are worse
That to me seems like the same logic being used by the israelis to justify killing the Palestinians. Its never justified to go after the civilian population and non combatants.
That to me seems like the same logic being used by the israelis to justify killing the Palestinians.
The difference though is the availability of precise targeting of the enemy versus the civilians.
Do you potentially end the lives of a million of your own drafted citizens just for more precise targeting of the enemy? One hell of a moral dilemma for any leader to decide.
Its never justified to go after the civilian population and non combatants.
Absolutely agree with this, and one of the reasons I’m upset personally with Israel right now is that they are fairly infamous for being able to precisely target their enemy when they want to, and hence what they’ve done in Gaza to the civilian population that had nothing to do with the conflict is just horrific.
Having said all that, there is a nuance in the two scenarios, they are not equal.
Mostly agreed. Historians and philosophers can argue ad nauseum about if the bombs were the only way to end the war, but we literally can’t know. Some argue that everyone will listen to the emperor while others argue that they would fight to a long, drawn-out death, citing the coup that happened even after the Japanese saw the immense power of the bombs.
My comments just give insight into the ferocity with which they attack the movie. Japan doesn’t teach their population about all of the war, the invasion of China and the Philippines, the rape of Nanjing…any of it. They are only taught that they were one day minding their own business when Americans destroyed two cities. It makes sense they don’t want to consume this media.
this isn’t specifically a Japanese thing though, most American kids are taught that dropping both bombs was the only way to win the war, when this is still the subject of a lot of debate. for that matter, they probably aren’t taught about how eugenics were effectively exported from America to Germany. I’m from the UK and I had to wait until I was reading history for fun to learn about most of the UK’s colonial crimes. the way history is taught in schools is just a bit shit
Wholeheartedly agree, history books are basically propaganda. Like, I it get if you don’t want to get into the gory details of war, but if that’s the case, why talk about murdering civilians at all.
Americans learn everything about the middle-eastern conflict from Sept. 11th, 2001 and on. They don’t know anything of what happened before then, or why these evil bastards were so mad, etc.
Americans learn everything about the middle-eastern conflict from Sept. 11th, 2001 and on.
Do they actually get anything about the “and on” bit in high school? Feels like the kind of thing they’d have to wait til uni for.
From what I understand this is not the main point of contention among historians. That Imperialist Japan, like all Axis powers, was a cancer that demanded amputation was not the justification for the deployment of nukes. Rather, the debatable justification was their leadership’s inability to surrender unconditionally.
thousands is tiny compared to how many japan killed
I think there’s a difference between killing Japanese military and Japanese civilians. With that logic the american civilians deserved dying on 9/11
I never said they deserved to be killed. They needed to be killed but they didnt deserve it. It just had to happen that way or they would have decimated their population fighting a losing battle.
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But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.
My understanding was they were actually attacking manufacturing for the war, it’s just that an atom bomb is not that discriminatory, and that all the military-only targets had already been bombed out of existence by that point.
Not saying it was right, just explaining it wasn’t as black-and-white as you express.
No, the targeting committee was very clear that the targets were selected mainly based on spectacle and effect.
They purposely kept a few cities in a “pristine” (or as close as possible) by disallowing other bombings so when the nukes were finished the before and after would look more dramatic.
The fact that they could just ignore these cities before dropping the nukes shows that the targets were of little to no military value
No, the targeting committee was very clear that the targets were selected mainly based on spectacle and effect.
That’s not my understanding at all, only just that having witnesses was a side effect, but not the primary reason.
From what I remember from watching documentaries there were military targets in the cities, I think (don’t hold me to it) bomb making factories.
Feel free to pass on some links if you know otherwise, as history is always a learning experience.(See edit below.)Edit: Looking at the Wiki page, under the section about targeting, it mentions this about Hiroshima…
Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters
… and…
Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage.
The wiki article does mention what you’re stating as well, so in essence we’re both right, though I would still argue that the military objective was primary, and the spectacle as you call it was secondary, even if it was a close secondary.
Thats and interesting point, but it does make me think, why drop the nukes when they can just bomb the manufacturing hubs without incurring as much civilian death
why drop the nukes when they can just bomb the manufacturing hubs without incurring as much civilian death
That’s just it, they had been, for quite a while, but the Japanese would not capitulate.
So just bombing military targets with regular ordinance wasn’t enough. The type of bombing was a signal and a message in and of itself.
Interesting post. I was unaware of this “random attack” teaching. Is this present day curriculum? Japan isn’t closed off to Western internet and media. It can’t be that close of a secret, I mean they’re watching Oppenheimer right now. Not like China where they lose you in a prison colony if you talk about certain historical facts and the internet and media are fully censored.
I’m reminded of the Japanese guy who remained encamped on some spit of jungle in the Pacific Islands until something bananas like 1975 or something, and he had been out there with two others still holding their position, and had shot like 15 locals. Even when NGOs brought them newspapers, they assumed it was an American trick because they were taught and still believed that Japan would never surrender and would die fighting door to door to the last. It must have seemed paradoxical to them. They had to bring back the guy’s commanding officer fom a retirement home or something and fly him to the island to get the guys to come out. As far as I understand, that sort of rhetoric is viewed in Japan how anti semitic rhetoric is viewed by most Germans.
Personally I think those two bombs saved a lot of lives by destroying Japan’s will to continue prosecuting the war, and two showed restraint that the world has continued to this day. As I understand, some in America argued for more targets, like as many as 50(?) cities? If that had happened, Japan wasn’t going to be any more beaten than if they lost the will to fight and surrendered unconditionally after just two bombs, and I wonder what might have happened if that tradition of restraint didn’t exist all these years. You know, if it had been fifty, sometime by now some despot would have been saying “what’s the big deal, not like we did fifty.”
Mines is mostly anecdotal - I grew up in Hawaii and became friends with a lot of Japanese nationals + my wife’s family constantly has get-togethers in Japan or America. Thankfully there’s several testimonies on Reddit and YouTube that I sadly can’t reference because I’m on mobile.
I want to clarify as well, I’m not saying the Japanese are bad, I’m saying why Oppenheimer would spark outrage for Japan’s general public. Some comments in this post could benefit from cultural context. It’s not as simple as “haha people who got beat up don’t want to watch the replay”. It’s tragic, and I get it.
As I said in a comment below, a country’s history curriculum seems to always show the country as a winner, or the victim of an atrocity. Every country seems to be guilty of this to some degree, I just like how Germany handles it: “we did dumb shit, we’re never doing it again, and here’s why.”
And still, even here in Germany, people played victim, the perpetrators just weren’t the people who “freed” us. There was (and still is to some extent) a “we didn’t know about anything about the holocaust, we’re all victims of the evil Nazis” mentality. This was, of course, most prominent in the years after the war because being a Nazi suddenly had consequences. And it’s obviously not true. While a majority of the population might not have known about death camps or the exact conditions in the camps, they certainly knew about the persecution of the jewish community.
Of course, our history classes do now teach about that (meaning that we did know, even though we liked to pretend we didn’t).
Huh. It’s almost like history is written by the victor.
Right, just like 9/11 was justified due to U.S. imperialism.
Lol
Hitting too close to home?
Crazy, what’s next, a nazi movie released in germany?
As a german, I wish someone made some more of these. Because people seem to have forgotten about the horrors of WW2.
More? It feels like nine out of ten war movies focus on WW2. You can’t throw a stone at IMDB without hitting three WW2 movies and a series along the way.
I think they mean new, so people will watch right now and maybe think to stop genociding people and giving power to fascists
The last good ww2 movie was Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List. 1917 is good also
1917 is good also
1917
I think they were referring to the fact that World War 2 didn’t start until 1939. The film 1917 and the year take place during World War 1.
Edited for clarification
This is why 1917 is in another sentence and there’s no comma after my first sentence. I would assume most people know 1917 is WW1. I was referring to the comment in this thread of more people needing to see more war movies in order “to stop genociding people and giving power to fascists”.
Lmao thank you for that. I was skimming and thought they were just talking about good films about war
Right, it’s clearly a movie about the war of 1812
1917 has to be my favorite WW2 movie of all time
You forgot a /s
Naah, its funnier this way
I feel like more people need to “forget” the /s
To quote my favourite comedian: Jokes should never end with “I’m Joking”
Hacksaw ridge?
Dunkirk, Lives of Others, The Pianist, Inglorious Basterds, The Counterfeiters, Band of Brothers, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Valkyrie, Imitation Game, Fury, The Pacific, The 12th Man…
Nothing will beat Downfall in terms of German movies on WWII
The Zone of Interest was so good but even it got misunderstood
You had one that Hitler just revived in the parking lot he died and he started talking with some people and it was chilling as fuck. Like tou are talking about how immigration is shit with a guy dressed as Fuckin HITLER!?
Look who’s back?
I watched part of that movie. It was weird.
There have been so many movies and series just the past few years though… many really good too, and many that go pretty far in showing how horrible the nazis were.
So, you need more films? I guess hollywood just ran out of ideas… What about a film of nazis in a desertish mediterranean setup, fighting natives with modern american weapons, because idk… time travel? And spoken entirely in hebrew?
Hebrew, babes.
Thanks
Emu documentary in Australia
I speak for the trees and the trees speak fruckin emu. U know one of the worlds largets structures is a fence we built to contain then longer tgan the great wall of china so we may have lost the war but we did manage to put em in the worlds largets and only emu camp
Well i’m in my mid 30s but i’ve seen a tv premiere of a star trek tos episode.
The bombings has to be seen in the context of the unimaginable horrors orchestrated by the Japanese state that had to be stopped, at almost any cost.
Almost… Another way to see it is they burdened future generations as an expedient measure to save the lives of the people now in the past. Another another way to look at the bomb is preventing another world war.
An interesting historical point is Japan had largely been defeated by the time the bombs were dropped. And they had the option to bomb an uninhabited (or very lightly) part of Japan’s territory as a show of force. But, instead they specifically chose to irradiate civilians.
They burdened future generations?
Because future generations have to safehold and not misuse extremely destructive knowledge. We have a world where North Korea has nuclear weapons, but do they have the ethics to use them responsibly, understanding their full potential? Do the other countries with nuclear bombs have that ethical responsibility, especially over generations? Cuz that big red button is going to be around for a while.
If it weren’t the USA, it would have been the Nazis or Russians who invented it.
One would argue given enough time some kind of civilizations ending event is an inevitability. With nukes we’re just increasing that risk.
I always like to think of it more as a race between evolution and extinction.
Yes, I would say the threat of dying in nuclear hell fire (if you were lucky) a bit of a burden.
lol
It is also interesting that the movie focuses on the scientists developing the bomb over everything else. There is a removal of the protagonists from seeing the destruction of their work, but that was done on purpose by the military. Even within that, you see a discussion of morality of the bomb by its developers and that the scientists, in almost all cases, have a more nuanced understanding of the destructive power they are developing and the ethics of using such a device.
I think that’s always the way. Compartmentalisation. Though I don’t blame the film for not showing the horrors taking place in those cities. At the time Oppenheimer wouldn’t have access to those images, and so I guess neither do we. On the other hand - unless I miss remember - we do get to see him watching a film reel. So, maybe they could have shoehorned the scenes of destruction. But, personally, I think it’s enough to see the effect it has on Oppenheimer. Any more could be classed as prurient voyeurism.
I don’t know of you or @HobbitFoot@lemmy.world is aware but the screenplay of the movie was written in first person. That’s how focused Nolan was from the very beginning. No way he was going to show actual bombings.
Also, funny that you mentioned compartmentalization. This article opens with same observation, and in turn refers to Matt Damon’s character in the movie.
I don’t think they could show the bombings as Oppenheimer wasn’t there. However, it is plausible that he saw some newsreel footage of the aftermath. They could show that.
This is of course just my opinion, but no horrors, imaginable or otherwise, that the Japanese could’ve possibly orchestrated at the time, with the means they had available, would’ve come close to the devastation caused by the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Look up the Rape of Nanking. Studying that alone made me believe the bombs were warranted. That’s not even including Unit 731, and the fact that the Japanese government still will not acknowledge their attrocities.
The bombs were a sad necessity to stop the monstrosities.
What does that atrocity have to do with the civilians who were nuked?
Would you have preferred napalm, like Tokyo?
Or a ground invasion? Like Berlin?
It has to do with them in that their government would only listen to the sound of their screams. That was the only way to stop them.
Except the government didn’t give a shit about the peasants or they would have surrendered earlier when so many were dying from previous bombings and the war was already obviously hopelessly lost. Let’s pretend what you say is correct, do you think Americans should get nuked because of the US carrying out the Iraq invasion and occupation along with the many other war crimes that the US carries out on a regular basis? We’ll find out just how much the government cares about these screams.
Maybe not nuked because the invasion of Iraq was a far cry from Unit 731 alone, but America certainly fucked around and found out with 9/11. The government very much cry over the screams of those affected by 9/11 as well.
Thanks for actually pointing out a specific atrocity committed by the Japanese, which did result in higher casualties than the bomb, though it happened over months rather than minutes, but ok, I’ll accept it.
Still, the point is, what atrocities were the Japanese capable of perpetrating at the time the bombs were dropped, that were prevented by it, and couldn’t have been prevented in a different way. There’s a big chance that the Japanese were going to surrender anyways, and if not, maybe just the threat of dropping the bomb (maybe, say, after a demonstration at sea or otherwise away from civilians) would’ve been enough.
There’s a big chance that the Japanese were going to surrender anyways, and if not, maybe just the threat of dropping the bomb (maybe, say, after a demonstration at sea or otherwise away from civilians) would’ve been enough.
They believe their Emperor was a God. The invasion of mainland Japan would have resulted in the Japanese fighting to the last man, woman, and child. Millions of civilian casualties. You suggest a test of the bomb would have forced Japanese surrender. But history tells the exact opposite story. There was a 3 day gap between the first and second bomb. Japanese high command thought the allies only had one bomb, refused to surrender. They only surrendered after the second bomb, when they realized this was repeatable.
let’s not say nukes are good. did the nukes undo those atrocities?
No, but they stopped more from occuring.
I will say nukes are bad, though.
>they stopped more from occuring
this can’t be proven
“The trolley might have stopped on its own”
it wasn’t a trolley though, was it? it was individuals making decisions.
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>Japan surrendered due to the Bomb drops.
we will never know whether they would have surrendered without them on the same time table.
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20 million+
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So, a couple of things, comment has been reported, likely for your final sentence which is about as removal worthy as anything else I’ve seen… but addressing your first point…
The argument at the time was that dropping the bomb WOULD save lives, military and civilian, compared to a full scale invasion of Japan.
Would the psychological impact of a full scale D-day style invasion be better or worse than the obliteration of 130,000+ people in Hiroshima and another 80,000+ in Nagasaki?
Well, smarter people than me have been arguing that since it happened. I’m certainly in no position to say one way or the other.
What can’t be debated, for the people who say “Japan was beaten, we didn’t need to drop the bomb…” Following Hiroshima on August 6th, there followed THREE DAYS requesting a surrender. The Japanese military refused. Even AFTER they knew the devastation of Hiroshima, the common thought was “hey, how many more bombs could they possibly have?”
So given they stubbornly refused to surrender following Hiroshima, that kind of gives you the idea of what devastation would be required from a full scale invasion. No, they weren’t ready to surrender, and didn’t even surrender after Hiroshima.
Three days isn’t that huge amount of time for this kind of thing, and of course, even after two bombs some still didn’t want to surrender. … but the emperor did, and that’s what matters. Maybe he would’ve surrendered after the first one, or maybe even with no bombs, given enough time to think… or maybe not, but the US didn’t try to go that route really. It really seems like they went for maximum civilian casualty. That’s the part I cannot agree with.
As for the comment, well, I’m always kind and respectful to those who are kind and respectful to me, despite disagreement, but if you just tell me to f off, all bets are off… so, feel free to remove if you want, but if you do, then please also remove the comment I was responding to. Thanks.
Yeah, partially because of the face saving culture. I do tend to agree with the assessment that an invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath for both the invaders and the Japanese.
It’s fine to believe that — I’ve been wrong before, too.
Of course, thats your prerogative, but then, quite frankly, you don’t know enough about Japanese war crimes.
Fight war crimes with war crimes
Debatable. But as always with this topic; what else would force the Japanese surrender?
Maybe the fact they were already sueing for peace? Maybe the complete distruction of their Navy and Air forces? Maybe the blockaid we had on the island? Maybe the fact they were already sueing for peace?
Oh boy, fun! By all means, provide a source that states that Japan would have surrendered irrespective of the atomic bombings. This could be amusing…
Here’s a whole video essay on the topic
https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?si=67gvnic_eEXJRAPQ
Japan was already asking for peace but the US was turning them down.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945. Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war. and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - The United States Strategic Bombing survey (European war) (Pacific War) https://ia801903.us.archive.org/33/items/unitedstatesstra00cent/unitedstatesstra00cent.pdf
I’m sorry, what war crimes did the civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima commit?
I’m sorry, what war crimes did the civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima commit?
None, but the state that governed them did, and the people are part of the state. What’s you point?
My point is that targeting civilians is never okay. And if we are going to open the box to “well the state committed war crimes so civilians had to be targeted” I’d like to know your opinions on both 9/11 and October 7th, cause I bet there’s gonna be some inconsistency to your belief.
But that whole argument concedes the point that the nukes stopped Japan. They did not. Japan was already sueing for peace. They were willing to negotiate and we know that what they were and were not willing to give up lines up with what we did end up agreeing to post war anyways. The nukes were pointless on top of being abhorrent.
You are incredibly naive. Total war between industrialized nations, as happened in WW2, is won or lost on industrial capacity. States literally need to cripple their enemy’s ability and will to wage war, which means destroying industrial production, food production, access to safe water, and civil infrastructure. And that is why there should never be another great power war.
As for the USA’s use of nuclear weapons in Japan, they weren’t used to “win” the war. As you say, the Japanese were effectively beaten. Nukes were used to force an immediate surrender, saving millions of both American and Japanese lives.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945. Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war. and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - The United States Strategic Bombing survey (European war) (Pacific War) https://ia801903.us.archive.org/33/items/unitedstatesstra00cent/unitedstatesstra00cent.pdf
But that whole argument concedes the point that the nukes stopped Japan. They did not. Japan was already sueing for peace. They were willing to negotiate and we know that what they were and were not willing to give up lines up with what we did end up agreeing to post war anyways. The nukes were pointless on top of being abhorrent.
You better have a good source if you’re going to make such a bold statement.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945. Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war. and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - The United States Strategic Bombing survey (European war) (Pacific War) https://ia801903.us.archive.org/33/items/unitedstatesstra00cent/unitedstatesstra00cent.pdf
I disagree. The proliferation of Fascist ideology, in Asia alone, would’ve far eclipsed the devastation of two nuclear payloads.
You’re assuming that dropping those bombs was the only way to stop the Japanese.
Three things:
-This is moving the goal post of the argument that I was replying to and irrelevant to this conversation.
-Theorizing about the consequences at stake in the war doesn’t assume anything retrospectively. The decision to deploy nukes was not made with the knowledge we possess after the fact.
-It’s very likely that any other option that would finally result in the complete cessation of an enemy as ideologically tenacious as Imperial Japan would’ve far exceeded a price that was able to be paid that late into the second world war.
You made an implicit assumption, and that assumption is very possibly wrong. You are “theorizing about the consequences” just as much as me by making that assumption.
For example, I can think of at least one way the US could’ve tried to avoid the huge civilian death toll: drop the bombs in the ocean, target the japanese navy, close enough that the blast will be seen from the mainland , yet far enough to avoid most civilian casualties. Then tell the Japanese to surrender, or else they’re next. I don’t claim to say it would’ve worked for sure, but at least they would’ve tried.
He’s not theorizing, he’s summarizing decades of historians’ research. We know, for example, with the benefit of hindsight, that your idea would not have worked- it would have lead only to countless deaths via nuke, and then a long, slow slog through the meat grinder for troops and civilians.
How do we know this? Because we have Japanese communications from the time- and they basically sum up to something along the lines of “They don’t have the balls to use the bomb against people again.” with a side dash of “they don’t have more bombs to throw at people.”
Exploding the first one over water, the second one over a city on people, and then NOT dropping a third one because we didn’t have anymore would have proved them right, and without a surrender it would have lead to millions of dead Americans and Japanese. They made so many purple hearts preparing for that invasion in 1945 that we still haven’t gone through the backlog, 80 years later.
Now think about it without the benefit of hindsight. You know that culturally, they refuse to surrender. You know they see massive losses as completely acceptable, civilian, military, and suicide bombers. You know they want to try and grind the US down, make them give up because of the sheer number of troops dead. You know they’re trying desperately to negotiate a favorable surrender where they can save face, maintain their ‘experiments’, and maintain their military, which is exactly the sort of thing that lead to WW2 in the first place. Finally you know you only have two bombs. Use them wrong, and the deaths, crippling, and wounding of millions of your own country’s soldiers is directly on your head. Use them right, and you might get some surrenders.
Frankly speaking, dropping the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost didn’t end the war. The second bomb was what finally changed the mind of the emperor, because he bought the bluff that if we had two we would throw at people, we had more. Even then, there was instantly a coup to try and halt the surrender process- and they thought this guy was literally an incarnation/speaker/appointed of god. That’s how much the military hated the idea of surrendering.
And finally, do keep in mind- every time the US bombed a Japanese city, they dropped leaflets warning the civilians to get out. By all accounts, they were actually highly effective.
To make it clear, dropping the bombs was a horrible thing. That it killed so many civilians who wouldn’t- or more likely couldn’t - get out in time, even if warned, is horrific. Leaflets are good and all, but that doesn’t meanyou have anywhere to go, or the infrastructure, and beyond that, the Emporer was executing anyone who tried to leave bombing areas. (Seriously, possession of a leaflet was grounds for immediate execution.) But the alternatives to dropping the bombs were judged, at the time, to be worse. And I believe that their decision to do so were understandable with the knowledge they had, the options they had, and the consequences to their own troops if they didn’t.
Very well written comment that will no doubt be under appreciated lol
Thank you for the very well written write up. It reflects my exact thoughts on the dropping of the bombs, but laid out in a much more coherent manner.
Dropping the bombs was by all means a horror unleashed to stop an even greater horror from occuring. A trolley problem incarnate almost. Personally I think trying to moralize the bombs at all is reductive and ignores many of the facts of the situation and creates an idealized version of how wars are/where conducted that simply is not real.
Thanks for the detailed response. Yes, I don’t claim to say for sure that my idea would’ve worked, though you seem convinced it definitely wouldn’t have, in hindsight. Yet, there are many other reports that point in the opposite direction, namely, that the Japanese were already beaten and likely to surrender anyways. I agree the culture was always to never surrender, so I doubt it, but the idea of being instantly destroyed after seeing the a-bomb in action could’ve changed somebody’s mind.
And if that didn’t work, maybe there was a way to avoid targeting civilians, while still hitting military targets, but it seems to me the intention was to hit civilians in large number, and that’s what I don’t like (and no, leaflets aren’t really enough).
Also, I didn’t know the US only had two bombs, so I did a bit of research, and actually, it seems a third one was gonna be ready pretty soon after. But then again, I’m glad a third one wasn’t used…
You made an implicit assumption
I don’t even know how to continue this conversation. I didn’t have to assume anything about Imperial Japan’s reception to alternative methods of prompted surrender to arrive at the conclusion that the theoretical devastation of Fascism proliferating is at all comparable to the nuclear bombs that were deployed.
So, are you a stoned emo man, or a stone demoman, or what?
You’re right, this conversation is pointless. You keep making unproven assumptions, even in your last reply, and don’t even know you’re doing it. Maybe search “assumption” in the dictionary? Anyways, good luck.
drop the bombs in the ocean, target the japanese navy, close enough that the blast will be seen from the mainland , yet far enough to avoid most civilian casualties. Then tell the Japanese to surrender, or else they’re next
The Trinity tests would have most likely been observed by Japanese spies/network, so the Japanese leadership already knew of the destructive nature of the bomb. And yet they didn’t surrender when ordered, until the bomb was finally used on their citizenry.
The trinity tests weren’t even close to Japan’s shore… yes, spies would’ve seen it, or heard about it, but regular army people, generals, etc. and the emperor would only know a second or third hand story.
Compare that to walking down the street and seeing a giant mushroom cloud at a safe but not so far distance, potentially with a large part of Japan’s navy gone in a blink (and maybe a bit of a tsunami as well). Let’s say this was timed such that the emperor himself would likely observe it. We can’t know for sure, and I concede that Japanese culture was very much “victory or death” at that time, but seeing it in person might, just might’ve changed some people’s mind, with a much smaller civilian death toll.
Also that the alternative was burning cities with the people still in them, and they’d seen that, which was have been more horrifying and slow than a nuclear conflagration.
The main way the atomic bombs worked was by setting everything on fire. The radiation was secondary, and much less significant.
Don’t forget the blast itself; The bomb dropped on Hiroshima first knocked much of the city over, and the fires started and spread later.
Not trying to downplay what Japan did, but I don’t think that’s why they dropped the bombs. Russia was closing in and the US didn’t seem keen on having to divide up Japan like they did in Europe. I’d say it’s more likely civilian targets were bombed to put social pressure on the emperor and government to accept defeat.
These bombs don’t discriminate, so even put into context like you say, it’s still not a good argument
So much conjecture, but if you have any good sources, feel free to share.
For Truman, news of the successful Trinity test set up a momentous choice: whether or not to deploy the world’s first weapon of mass destruction. But it also came as a relief, as it meant the United States wouldn’t have to rely on the increasingly adversarial Soviet Union to enter World War II against Japan.
From https://www.history.com/news/hiroshima-nagasaki-bombing-wwii-cold-war
By the morning of August 9, 1945, Soviet troops had invaded Manchuria and Sakhalin Island, but there was still no word from the Japanese government regarding surrender.
From https://www.britannica.com/event/atomic-bombings-of-Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki/The-bombing-of-Nagasaki
Moreover, regular incendiary bombing raids were destroying huge portions of one city after another, food and fuel were in short supply, and millions of civilians were homeless. General Curtis LeMay, the commander of American air forces in the Pacific, estimated that by the end of September he would have destroyed every target in Japan worth hitting. The argument that Japan would have collapsed by early fall is speculative but powerful.
From https://www.britannica.com/topic/Trumans-decision-to-use-the-bomb-712569
I don’t know what Truman thought, but I do think saving US soldiers and avoiding The Soviet Union must have weighed in on the decision to nuke cities.
I know history.com isn’t that great of a source, but I have to go back to work.
Of course the bombing campaign was purposed to pressure the Japanese government to surrender, but that it was, as you claim, so that the US didn’t have to carve up Japan with the Soviets is a claim that lacks support, and I couldn’t find that claim in your sources neither.
I love how Americans opened the “nuking of a civilian target” debate with “sometimes is justified” as their first card.
Which Americans do that you mean?
“If you violate the Geneva Convention, your people don’t get the protections of it” seems like a pretty reasonable way to justify the bombings tbh
In any case, there are some important considerations to be made here too:
After the horrors of Okinawa, US leadership expected a million casualties to take Japan itself, to the point where the Navy wanted to simply blockade Japan into submission. Given the Japanese civilians were already eating acorns and tree bark, and the military’s entire outward appearance was to never surrender, it isn’t unreasonable to assume Japan wouldn’t have given up.
Of course, the Japanese were refusing to surrender to the US in order to surrender through the USSR in hopes of getting a better deal (protect the emperor, no war crime trials, etc.). Of course, the Soviets invaded Manchuria and dashed all hopes of that, which, according to many people, was the real reason for Japan’s surrender.
It is a bit murky, but in response to the bombings and the invasion, there was a meeting on August 9th of the highest ranks of the Japanese government where it was determined that surrender was the only option and plans were drawn up to do so. However, on the 14th, there was an attempted coup by some army officers to continue the war, which failed after several high ranking officials refused to comply, among other things.
All of this taken together is not to say “the bombings were necessary,” but rather to show the situation as it developed, and how many different things could have gone wrong and dragged the war on for longer (side note: Japan still held a lot of territory and there were plans to liquidate POWs and the like in the event of surrender)
Was it right to vaporize thousands? In a vacuum, no, certainly not. But in the complex context of a war in which millions had already died and millions more still very well could have, its tough to say.
Justifying killing citizens is crazy
I mean, sure it’s horrible, but again, understanding the context behind decisions is important to getting a full idea of why something was done.
Take something like strategic bombing, which killed more people by a country mile than the atomic bombings. Does anyone bitch on the same level about how many people were killed by regular bombing? Hell, Operation Meetinghouse (the firebombing of Toyko in March 1945) killed something like 150k people in a single raid, and nobody says a goddamned word about it outside of historical circles.
At the end of the day, the idea behind strategic bombing (in the case of the Allies) was that it was a good way to damage the enemy’s war effort. The killing of civilians wasn’t the objective (unlike the Germans, who explicitly employed terror bombing of civilians as a tactic). Its the cold calculus of fighting a modern war - the enemy’s capacity to fight is the ability for them to make more things to fight with, so eliminating that capacity by demolishing factories and houses is a good strategy. The killing of civilians wasn’t the objective necessarily - breaking the apparatus they participated in was.
In some ways it’s actually better to simply leave millions homeless instead of killing them, as the enemy must house and feed these people instead of using those resources for fighting…
Either way, would you have rather the US blockaded Japan to death to force a surrender? Killing untold numbers of civilians from starvation and disease than a relatively small number of civilians in 2 places? Maybe we wouldn’t have needed to if the Russian invasion was enough to scare them into surrender, but we’ll never know that for sure…
What would you have done against an enemy that gave every indication they were planning to fight to the death?
Does anyone bitch on the same level about how many people were killed by regular bombing?
Yes?
The killing of civilians wasn’t the objective
It literally was? They could’ve chosen an isolated place to bomb but they strategically made decisions to highlight the impact of the bomb. To clearly depict the before and after.
Wow. A lot of this is just made up bs.
What would you have done against an enemy that gave every indication they were planning to fight to the death?
Idk personally. I’m not that educated in this topic.
I’d like to see the amount of discourse surrounding strategic bombing compared to the atomic bombings for average people. There aren’t any movies today talking about how horrific the normal bombing campaigns were, whereas this entire thread is dedicated to a recently released film about the Manhattan project…
As for an isolated place, well, they thought about that:
It was evident that everyone would suspect trickery. If a bomb were exploded in Japan with previous notice, the Japanese air power was still adequate to give serious interference. An atomic bomb was an intricate device, still in the developmental stage. Its operation would be far from routine. If during the final adjustments of the bomb the Japanese defenders should attack, a faulty move might easily result in some kind of failure. Such an end to an advertised demonstration of power would be much worse than if the attempt had not been made. It was now evident that when the time came for the bombs to be used we should have only one of them available, followed afterwards by others at all-too-long intervals. We could not afford the chance that one of them might be a dud. If the test were made on some neutral territory, it was hard to believe that Japan’s determined and fanatical military men would be impressed. If such an open test were made first and failed to bring surrender, the chance would be gone to give the shock of surprise that proved so effective. On the contrary, it would make the Japanese ready to interfere with an atomic attack if they could. Though the possibility of a demonstration that would not destroy human lives was attractive, no one could suggest a way in which it could be made so convincing that it would be likely to stop the war.
The key takeaway here is that they were unconvinced the Japanese military would react to anything else.
If the Allies wanted to kill more civilians with bombings, why did they drop millions of leaflets into cities urging people to evacuate? And no, they did not do so in any special sense for the atomic bombings out of fears the bomb wouldn’t work.
Again, it is quite easy to simply handwave this with “they could’ve done X” without being in the shoes of the people who made the choices. The project barely worked and cost billions of dollars, the enemy was assumed to be utterly fanatical in their devotion to continue the war, and there was no guarantee the bomb would have worked at all.
As for your claims of made-up BS…my statements are true to the best of my knowledge around allied war planning and bombing doctrine. There were plenty of ways to maximize civilian deaths using area bombing, and the Allies generally refused to do them, instead focusing on targets of military value.
Idk personally. I’m not that educated in this topic.
Ah, so then you are stating you lack sufficient data to make the right decision? Congratulations! You are experiencing, in part, what it was like to be living at that time! Nobody was educated in atomic warfare, as it hadn’t happened yet and we’d had basically 1 test a few weeks before it began for real. Pair that with not knowing what the Japanese were thinking and only having data based on their actions and official communications (which pointed to essentially national suicide in defense of the Emperor), and now you get a glimpse of the calculus being made about the bombings. Don’t fall into the classic “20/20 hindsight” trap many people fall into: think about the problem as though you were there.
I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, if any good came out of it, I think showing the world the death, devastation and illness an atomic attack on a city can cause likely made world leaders pause before pushing the button. The Cuban Missile Crisis comes to mind. Would either party have backed down if no one had actually seen what even a relatively small bomb could do to a city?
It’s not like we didn’t know nuclear bombs are destructive and violent. That’s the point.
Do you think thing people understand things in the abstract just as well as encountering a concrete example?
World leaders do not do abstract thinking well.
They did tests which clearly showed the destruction. They knew what would happen, but did not care. If it was your family and entire community being used as a test subject for American empathy, you wouldn’t have this take.
They did one test in the desert which did not clearly show the destruction. It did not show the deaths. It did not show the shadows on the wall. It did not show the burns. It did not show the blindness. It did not show the radiation sickness.
And the very first words in my post were, “I do not wish to justify the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” so I don’t know why you seem to think I believe they were justified.
Do you really not think anything the future can learn from can come out of a tragedy, no matter how horrific?
Saying you don’t wish to justify the tragedy doesn’t mean that wasn’t exactly what you were doing.
People don’t need to see something to know it’s going to be destructive. I have never personally seen a bloody car accident but I still know to avoid them.
Plus it’s not like people hadn’t seen a bomb before? Of course the nuclear bomb was worse, but all you have to do is see the damage existing bombs do, know that’s bad, and know that the nuclear bomb is going to be worse because they were designed to be worse.
Being able to find something good out of a tragedy is not justifying the tragedy in any way.
Look up the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Almost all labor rights in the U.S. came out of it. Does that justify all of those women dying? Of course not. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t result in making changes that ended up stopping many, many other people from being exploited and killed at work.
And if you don’t like that, feudalism was destroyed because the Black Death made workers a scarcity, which meant that lords could no longer hold them to farmsteads. Does that mean the Black Death was a good thing? I would hope you wouldn’t say it was anything but a tragedy.
There was no question, no doubt that atomic bombs would cause immense destruction.
The triangle shirtwaist factory gave activists a rallying cry for protections, but the people in charge of that factory could have easily predicted that locking the doors to a factory could be dangerous.
World leaders do not do abstract thinking well.
[Citation required.]
World leaders don’t get to be world leaders if they do not do abstract thinking well.
It’s just many times they’re constrained by the politics on the ground.
[Citation required.]
All of human history?
World leaders don’t get to be world leaders if they do not do abstract thinking well.
Yes, that certainly sounds like Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un.
Good thing they never had any access to nuclear weapons.
All of human history?
Yes, all the way back to the first caveman, Ug. He was one hell of a son of a bitch, though he knew how to handle those pesky dinosaurs, so was a favorite of his cave.
World leaders don’t get to be world leaders if they do not do abstract thinking well.
Yes, that certainly sounds like Donald Trump or Kim Jong Un.
[Citation required.] [Again.]
“Many times *they’re constrained by politics on the ground”
[Citation required]
See? We can be pedantic too. Asking for citations does not validate your opinion.
deleted by creator
“Many times *they’re constrained by politics on the ground”
[Citation required]
https://millercenter.org/issues-policy/governance/presidential-constraints
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001872677602900307
(There’s more if you need it.)
See? We can be pedantic too. Asking for citations does not validate your opinion.
Apparently whenever anyone ever challenges you on a point you’re making, they’re always just being pedantic. Can never be anything else. Your repeated attempts to “Kill the Messenger” is rude, and is getting old.
You never come back with something that proves your point, you always just go on the attack against the person that’s challenging you, as demonstrated in our current conversation.
I don’t suppose you could just actually back up your original point?
We’re supposed to be having a conversation, don’t take everything as a personal attack.
Everyone knows shit stinks, but it just seems to stink much more when you shit yourself at work.
Right, so since you know shit stinks, you don’t need to shit yourself to know it’s a bad idea.
That point makes sense, but why drop TWO bombs days apart? That’s sickening.
The reasoning at the time was that the Japanese would not believe the U.S. could do it more than once and they would have to believe the U.S. could obliterate Japan in order to surrender.
I have no idea if that would have been true, but that was the idea. It certainly is true that the Japanese were being told to fight until every last man, woman and child on the islands died, so it was a desperate situation all around.
But the fact is that it was only a matter of time before someone developed an atomic bomb and no one has been crazy enough to use one in a war since 1945. The main reason for that, in my opinion, is that the world saw what happened.
Dropping this cough cough here, because apparently this comments section desperately needs it.
Oppenheimer was not as good as it was made out to be.
The plot was muddy and jumped around between multiple time periods and the dialogue was confusing at shit.
Cinematography and acting was beyond amazing though.
Nonlinear narrative is not necessarily a bad thing, and neither is complicated exposition.
Of course. And in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction it works extremely well. But here not so much. Unfortunately.
But here not so much.
Completely disagree with this opinion. The title of the movie is Oppenheimer. It would stand to reason that the film would include an introspective character study into the incredibly conflicted mind of a tortured physics genius.
In other words, it’s bloody obvious that the narrative was going to get dense.
The nonlinear storytelling was a deliberate device used to build suspense regarding the two contradictory imperatives tearing at the man’s morals, and I never once found the setting of any particular scene unable to be deduced by context.
This is like someone saying a book is bad because they don’t understand some of the words.
All the things you mentioned were specific choices made, not failures.
Just for the people who want to defend a nearly 100 year old tragedy for some reason. Here is a document from the US armed forces calling you a fucking idiot.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945. Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war. and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. - The United States Strategic Bombing survey (European war) (Pacific War) https://ia801903.us.archive.org/33/items/unitedstatesstra00cent/unitedstatesstra00cent.pdf
When Hiroshima was erased in less than a second, the Japanese navy had been eradicated.
The status of their mainland holdings was irrelevant, because they were under blockade.
Their air force was out of planes, oil, and pilots.
Their mechanization program basically never happened in the first place, and their tanks were irrelevant to a military that had marched to Berlin.
Their miracle weapon programs were failures or still in development.
They’d lost 2 million troops trying to conquer China, Korea, and the Philippines and killing 20 million people in the process.
They knew from the start that victory against America alone was impossible. The warmongers just thought the filthy gaijins would surrender if they sank enough of the Pacific Fleet.
They had agreed to abide by the Geneva Conventions and then immediately broke their word.
They had already seemingly refused a conditional surrender offer.
The person writing the paper that council of academics pulled their ideas from has been repeatedly found falsifying documents and denying the Rape of Nanking.
The USA waited three days between bombings to give them time to surrender in the face of power even the most delusional could not deny.
Do you know what happened instead?
The military tried to launch a coup to stop the surrender after the second bomb, the Kyuju incident. The War Minister tried to enlist the rest of the government to help against the wishes of their literal God Emperor.
Get fucking real with your “They were going to surrender anyways.”
Now if want to argue the Allies should have just starved them out instead…
Maybe. How many peasants do you think the most zealous military cult in history would have let die before admitting defeat?
How much would you have spent offering mercy to an enemy that had none of their own?
I think the civilian target is hard to justify, but that ship had well and truly sailed in that war at that point, so it’s interesting that it gets singled out. Presumably because it was only two bombs, versus hundreds of thousands. Fact is, it did happen, and plenty more besides. I think we can agree none of it was ideal.
America’s classic “bomb civilians tactic”
“the military launched a coup”. Really? The whole military? All against Hirohito himself. Musta been a Chad to single handedly stop the entire Japanese military from couping him.
What you meant to say is a cadre of young officers attempted to storm some government buildings before being put down quickly by the Japanese military.
But ya know what they say. Grain of truth and all that.
Hey, have you ever looked into the Japanese negotiation strategy for peace against the “unconditional terms” we ended up giving them? I’ll save you the trouble, they are identical. The problem is that by refusing to negotiate and demanding unconditional surrender, you don’t care about stopping the war and saving lives. You care about making your years of jingoistic demands seem legit. We demanded unconditional surrender not because we didn’t like their terms, but because we needed to embarrass them for political points back home.
That is not worth nuking 2 cities for.
Imagine killing two urban centers worth of civilians for the sole purpose of proving a point. Scum.
All of human knowledge at your fingertips and this is your take lol.
Imagine, if you will, all the people. Living life, dare I say it, in peace. Etc.
Where is that in the document? I tried to find it but it’s long and I couldn’t spot it. Weren’t the bombs dropped in August '45?
it’s not in there
Not as a quote but the picture painted is extremely clear. They knew the war was unwinnable. The high command knew it and the emperor knew it.
I will say the idea that we weren’t saving a million lives by nuking them depends on hindsight. We had just gotten done with some of the most brutal fighting in the world’s history. We had no reason to suspect they would just lay down their arms.
Man, it would be a shame if you looked at page 107. You know you can just control f search PDF’s right?
Mine only goes up to page 94
I’m unsure why it would be getting cut off for you. I will provide a screenshot of the page.
Page 107. Not PDF page, document page.
Thank you.
Reading it over, I can see that scenario would have involved continued fire bombing campaigns, which had already killed over 300,000 people and left over 8 million homeless. It also suggests that many of Japan’s 2 million troops and thousands of planes would have been destroyed before surrender.
It says the vast majority of people surveyed in Japan at the time were willing to continue fighting the war, and the political structure made surrender particularly unlikely.
What do you think the US should have done in 1945?
Interesting fact about this document is that from what I recall, the air force pushed hard on the idea that bombing alone would be sufficient to win in an effort to secure funding when the US military downsized post-war. I’d fake its findings with at least a little grain of salt.
Also, it’s not like we could really have simply sat on our hands until December…the American public wanted results and the cost if the war was astronomical already, so adding on months of mobilization and war economy to “save the lives of a few Japs” (to use the relatively widely held stance of Americans at the time) was never going to happen. To say nothing of the toll on human lives regular strategic bombing and famine conditions would inflict…
Japan’s outrage over the movie is so silly
Do you uh… know how WWII ended for Japan?
No, absolutely no idea. Please tell me
It’s not supposed to be bait, I’m just making fun of OP
