Today the last atomic weapon fired in anger was dropped from Bock's Car.
76 years without an atomic war is a good start!
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Yay, and a rather percussive end to Japan's nuclear program, well, the part that wasn't in what would become North Korea.
ReplyDeleteI have read some about WWII, and was shocked to find that the fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people, and destroyed more buildings than the two bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the bombs were more a demonstration than anything else, and possibly a signal to the Soviets that we not only had finalized the bombs, but were ready and willing to use them.
Militarily, the decision to drop the bombs was debated in high places, as it may not have been necessary to do so. All signs pointed to the surrender of Japan, within a short period of time. But politically, and also as that signal to the Soviets, it was expedient, and Truman had a lot of pressure internally in his own party to do so. I doubt we will ever know for sure if the bombings were needed, but I have read a couple of books, quite some time ago, that argued against dropping them, and as far as I can remember, the argument against their use was quite solid.
At least we reinforced the thoughts of Lee, who said, " It is good that war is such a terrible thing, lest we grow too fond of it."
The Japanese thought they could leverage the US and keep basically all they got before Pearl Harbor. Including both the political system and the military system. Japanese islands we took from them, from the Marshalls and Gilberts to Iwo and Saipan et al, Guam and such would be back under Japanese control.
DeleteOne segment of the Japanese military was in favor of surrender before the two A-bombs. The rest? Not so much. That other segment was the one that tried an almost successful coup against the Emperor after he declared surrender.
The people of Japan were preparing for a rather bitter fight-to-the-end, from arming children to piloted torpedoes all on the coast to lots and lots and lots of planes and artillery.
The fact that we are still using Purple Hearts minted for the expected Invasion says something. After-analysis of Japanese preparations showed that we most likely would have sustained 10x the number of casualties expected. We expected the under-equipped Japanese of the outer islands and their conquered possessions. The main islands were (and are) chock full of all sorts of war material.
The A-Bombs gave the powers-that-be the ability to surrender. The slow bombing and starvation campaign wouldn't and didn't.
@ Beans
DeleteRe:"The fact that we are still using Purple Hearts minted for the expected Invasion says something. After-analysis of Japanese preparations showed that we most likely would have sustained 10x the number of casualties expected."
That's always an interesting bit of historical trivia to recall, isn't it - and quite sobering, too.
The decision to drop the atom bombs, historically-speaking, must be considered not only in its wartime ramifications, but in light of the fact that atomic weapons and our use of them became a potent propaganda tool used against us by the communists during the Cold War, in particular by the East Germans, but others also. A lot of leftist/anti-military/anti-U.S. academics with Marxist leanings still regurgitate the flawed stats & bogus arguments cooked up by the other side during the Cold War, even today. Those communists, they had some highly-skilled propagandists, I'll tell you that. It's been thirty years since the Iron Curtail fell,and we're still dealing with it.
There was a vigorous, even ill-tempered at times,debate about the wisdom of using the atomic bombs on Japan directly. The truth, however,is more clear cut: Harry S Truman, President and Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, really had no other option than to use the bombs when and how he did.
U.S. public morale was faltering; bond drives were failing, people were tired of the war and wanted it to end as expeditiously as possible. If Truman had delayed using the bombs or declined to use them at all, there would have been a public outcry you and I probably can't imagine. And it wasn't just the prospect of saving American lives, not to use these weapons after the enormous national sacrifices made to acquire them, is inconceivable. Truman would have been crucified in terms of public opinion, and probably impeached or forced to resign.
Critics of the use of the atomic bombs fail to take into account that of all of the methods available to us - to the Anglo-American allies - to end the war with as little total bloodshed as possible, the atomic bombs were probably the best, meaning the least horrific. Continued firebombing would have taken more lives of Japanese civilians, Tokyo times ten perhaps. An invasion of the kind forecast by Operation Downfall would have probably caused well over a million causalities - perhaps multiples of that figure - if undertaken.
We have the estimates, but also equally important, we know how much it cost to take a heavily-defended enemy city, or fortified well-defended island. The Battle of Berlin alone cost more than one-million German and Soviet casualties, civilian and military. What would the Battle of Tokyo have cost? Seeing how hard Japanese forces fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa,it is hard to believe that anything but a bloodbath could have resulted.
Moreover, if the war had dragged on and the Japanese home islands invaded, the Russians would have pressed their attacks into mainland China against the Kwantung Army. More casualties, Japanese and Russian, Chinese perhaps also.
The atomic bombs, being unprecedented in the history of warfare, gave the bloody-but-unbowed and proud Japanese people and the emperor himself, a face-saving way of surrendering.
And even after the two bombs, the "His Highness" was almost assassinated in a coup attempt by surviving hardliners in the army.
I'm probably not the only person who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s that is surprised we've gone that long without having a nuclear war.
ReplyDeleteWe should have dropped bombs on Moscow and Bejing after Japan. If we had taken out Soviet and Chinese "communists" after WWII, we could have avoided the whole "cold war" mess. But Truman was a wimp. He didn't listen to the right people.
ReplyDelete