So said J. Robert Oppenheimer reflecting on the first successful test of the atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.
Not even a month after that test, 60 years ago today on August 6th, Hiroshima became the first city to be the target of an atomic weapon. Nagasaki followed a few days later.
The destruction of Hiroshima was delivered by one weapon in an instant. The immediate death toll at Hiroshima was 70,000. 5 years after the bombing it had risen to 200,000 from cancers and other after effects of radiation. To achieve the destruction of Dresden and Tokyo, thousands of tons of bombs and hundreds of bomber sorties were required over hours.
The historic arguments continue over whether the use of atomic weapons was justified has not been settled. A summary of arguments pro and con can be found here. However atomic weapons were used and it is the consequences that we must deal with even 60 years after the event.
When the Soviet Union was our enemy the threat of nuclear annihilation was our shared terror. The collapse of the communism has eased those fears and since then Islamic terrorism has become our new shared terror. The old terror faded is not something that we should forget. And it is not just the potential for terrorists to acquire a nuclear device via proliferation. The concern is for any country with nuclear capabilities. The use of nuclear weapons, in any conflict, would not only have the immediate strategic impact but an impact that could last for decades.
As a personal note I visited Hiroshima in 1992. The Peace Museum is a sombre reminder of the human cost of war. It is hard, even with the evidence presented, to conceive of how much destruction was wrought in an instant. All that was left behind of some victims were shadows on buildings created by the blast. The power of even a primitive nuclear device is terrifying.
I also lived in Kokura for a number of years. This city was the original target of the second atomic bomb. Cloud cover on August 9, 1945 meant that the secondary target of Nagasaki was chosen instead.
He, was of course, quoting the Hindu Goddess Kali.
I saw a report on this on sbs last night – it seems that attendance from Japanese school kids at the Peace Museum is declining. The report didn’t really go to why.
The Channel 10 report was quite a contrast – some American museum guide showing people the Enola Gay and explaining that dropping the bomb was “good for both America and Japan”.
It’s such a hard, crystalline moment in history, that ther will never be agreement on right or wrong – and probably rightly so. But isn’t it notable that we managed to get through the subsequent years without it ever coming to that again, and that it hasn’t resulted in an Arab/Jew divide between the Japanese and the US? Why can I think nothing of Japan (and probably vice versa), but Osama can’t forgive the Crusades?
As for Japan it would be hard to say why school kids attendance is declining. You would have to look at the education system. There has been a lot of controversey regarding how Japanese WW II history is covered in schools.
Whether you agree with the bombings or not, the event can’t be described as good and something to be proud of. It is not something to rejoice in.
Irant, I’m not sure that we’re right to be complacent post the Cold War – even setting aside terrorists with nukes, the non-proliferation process certainly isn’t working as it’s intended to – with Israel, India and Pakistan joining the nuclear powers. Bush last week normalised relations with India – Clinton had tried to exert pressure in the subcontinent for the states to give up their nukes. There are arguments for and against both Clinton’s and Bush’s approach – but I still think we should be more alert and alarmed on these matters.
Maybe I was a tad subtle or didn’t frame it correctly but that was my intention to warn against such complacency. I’m in agreement that the non-proliferation process is failing.
I think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki serve as reminders of the horror of it all. This should prompt much more interest in the NPT which has practically collapsed thanks to US policies, including John Bolton’s help in torpedoing the recent 5 year NPT meeting in NY (ie he didn’t attend+no preparation by other US officials= no agenda= zilch).
Those who trash the NPT and/or the UN in our name should think again.
US foreign policy since the beginning of the Bush administration in 2000, has in no way addressed the major threat of nuclear proliferation. The NPT is in grave danger of becoming irrelevant for the simple reason that pursuit of war against Iraq for suspicion of WMD possession by the United States, has by its very unilateral, unjustified and illegal nature, encouraged nations such as North Korea and possibly Iran to possess nuclear weapons.
This is seen by NK and Iran as the only method to deter non-UN authorised “preventative” military attacks or invasions by the US. Acquiescing to Israel, India and PakistanÄôs possession of nuclear weapons outside the NPT allows a double standard to operate, not the least of which is the USÄôs development of a new generation “bunker busting” bomb, developed ironically now to counter the very threat that US policy creates.
With all these factors taken together, US foreign policy may have already altered the dynamics of the NPT beyond repair, a major concern to global security.
Another Hiroshima is waiting around the corner but this time it may well be a terrorist group that does it, ie a non-state group.
If that happens we will be entitled to point more than one finger of blame.
Post-nuclear apocalyptic vision is a common theme in Japanese anime.
One of the special features on the ‘The Animatrix’ DVD was a potted history of anime where the guy explained that Japan actually *was* a post nuclear apocalypic society. That clicked with me.
The nuclear weapon exchanges in Terminator three that merges into vision of a field of skulls I found quite chillingly awesome in the true sense of the word.
The nuclear blast in the stadium in ‘The Sum of All fears’ was a good realisation of such a blast too.
The book ‘Brighter than a Thousand Suns’ is a must read for anyone interest in the Manhattan project. I don’t think it’s been in print for a while though.
It is odd that the Americans and Soviets went for about 2,500 to 3000 nuclear warheads each, yet China has only gone for forty. It’s as if they know even forty is more than enough.
Ironically enough it is probably a good thing that the Russian mafia own some of the suitcase bombs.
They aren’t going to let them off – it would be very bad for business.
Irant, I got that – what I was trying to say was that “we” in general shouldn’t be too complacent.
It is a bit interesting actually – in some ways the nuclear confrontation was so tied up with the Soviet/American bipoliarity that when the Cold War ended, we all felt suddenly safe.
Incidentally, I was trying to explain to my students yesterday what it felt like growing up thinking about the threat of Cold War morphing into nuclear war, and also how absolutely stunning the events of 1989 were – but it’s hard to get across to people who were just out of nappies when the Berlin Wall fell.
A different era, but the new one is not without its dangers. India/Pakistan confrontation a few years back was really scary. Given where we are, I’m surprised we didn’t take more notice of it in Oz.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050505B.shtml
According to Robert McNamara, in his article “Apocalypse Now” in Foreign Policy, US has 4500 warheads, Russia 3800 and Britain/France/China between 200 and 400 each.
McNamara says US possession of 4500 on hair trigger alert is “…immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous”
Who would disagree?
Sorry Mark.
Good point about the eras. I was thinking about the hype and commentary that accompanied the screening of The Day After in the mid 1980s.
“Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.” Stephen Hawking
We only have one defense against nuclear weapons, universal sanity. But it appears this may also be declining in most areas.
Here’s George Monbiot on Bush and non-proliferation.
Mark, he was quoting Krsna (an incarnation of Vishnu), in the Bhagavad Gita, part of the Mahabarata. It is part of the conversation Arjuna the Pandava archer, has with his charioteer Krsna, about the nature of godhead, action, sacrifice, and duty.
My bad, Rex. I thought he was quoting Kali because she’s the destroyer, is she not?
I thought Shiva was the destroyer.
Evidently I don’t know my Hindu scriptures!
Yet another lamentable chink in your armour, lad – better get straight onto it.
Mark, in the classical Hindu pantheon, typically all the major gods are also the other major gods in one canon or another. But E.P. is right, in the tradational trio; Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer… Kali Dhurga is basically the all-pervading goddess of death-in-life.
On second thought, don’t bother – rex obviously has it all over everyone in the “Hindu Scriptures” category. What do you do, rex, lecture this stuff?
Oh come on Tony, this sort of stuff is easily learnt by the interested reader.
Did you know that in one cosmogyny, the Vishnu lies asleep on Anata, the world-snake, and while he dreams a lotus grows from his belly and this contains the World: the Universe is God’s dream.
There’s something vaguely Trinitarian about that – I’ll have to get out my Catechism.
Interesting, Rex. I know little enough about Hinduism – only what I gleaned from a survey course on world religions in 1986! Have always meant to do some reading!
Ps – apologies to Irant, this is a bit extracurricular for his post!
Wasn’t Kali the goddess of chaos, and the thugs her devotees?
A quote I remember from long ago: ‘All creation is the sport of my mad mother Kali’.
Well, Kali is not really a “goddess of” anything as much as “The Goddess”. Down in the rural villages, Kali in one form or another is the most widely worshipped deity.
Sorry, rex, I wasn’t having a crack at your erudition – I was delighting in it. Once again, the wonders of LP and its contributors.
To get back slightly on topic, there’s a couple of worthwhile biographies of Oppenheimer just released.
I think it’s fantastic we’re discussing Indian texts. I’ve always loved the Mahabarata, but my mother strongly disapproved on feminist grounds, arguing that Draupadi was simply a passive and explioited idiot. I preferred the Ramayana. I’m still working my way thorugh the 10 volumes of ‘The Ocean of Story’, strongly recommended by Salman Rushdie.
Back on topic, though – the use of atomic weapons on Japan was hideous, but it had to be done, as far as I can see. There was no other way to persuade the Emperor that Japan had to surrender, in the absence of the loss of – I believe…. this is what I’m told by experts, I and they could be wrong – 2 million Allied casualties, and 10 million Japanese, which is what a ‘conventional’ victory would likely have cost.
I think they should have executed Hirohito as a war criminal.
The SMH has an interview with Paul Tibbets. At the end it goes a bit off the rails but the first part, his story of his involvement with the Bomb, is interesting, to say the least.
I had the impression that Hirohito was a powerless figurehead, somewhat like the Queen of England. Tojo and the other militarists were the real villains in my opinion.
Jeez, go out to a party and the comments take a typical, learned LP discursion into Hindu scriptures.
Hirohito was limited in power but he did have a great influence. Though he got pushed aside by the by the militarists he could have intervened earlier than he did. Note that some suggest that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was welcomed by the Japanese military as it gave them a face-saving excuse to surrender.
It could be well argued that Hirohito did deserve to be tried as war criminal. However MacArthur’s move to keep Hirohito as Emperor was a brilliant move. It helped ensure the occupation and rebuilding of Japan was peaceful and of course succesful.
there was no other way to persuade the Emperor that Japan had to surrender
No, I don’t think that’s right, Rob. As I understand it, more recent historical research shows that the Japanese were sounding out the Americans for a surrender. Truman decided to go ahead in part for the “demonstration effect”, and in part to enforce an unconditional surrender. Leaving aside the anti-Soviet motivation, was the death and destruction caused worth “unconditional” as opposed to a negotiated surrender?
All this stuff about saving lives through avoiding an invasion was the public justification. With events 60 years in the past, when archives are opened, you tend to be able to get behind the rhetoric and at the truth.
The public justification seemed to be pretty believable to the members of the public at the time who were going to have to invade Japan and get shot.
No doubt. But if Truman had explored all opportunities, then they wouldn’t have had to.
Truman was just another fallible human, who had been through 4 pretty bloody years of a war Japan started. His airforce was already bombing the crap out of Japanese cities every night, so I think he could be excused for thinking the only difference was fewer of his own people would involved/exposed this time. The Soviets had entered the war & invaded the northern islands, and a negotiated surrender would have been completely out of keeping with everything that had gone before during the Pacific campaign (and a huge historical mistake – think Versailles and Saddam). Do we really condemn him for not deciding to keep “exploring opportunities”, but rather just finishing it?
Mark
The ‘traditional view’ of the 1960s era is as you note:
No, I donÄôt think thatÄôs right, Rob. As I understand it, more recent historical research shows that the Japanese were sounding out the Americans for a surrender. Truman decided to go ahead in part for the “demonstration effect”, and in part to enforce an unconditional surrender. Leaving aside the anti-Soviet motivation, was the death and destruction caused worth “unconditional” as opposed to a negotiated surrender?
All this stuff about saving lives through avoiding an invasion was the public justification. With events 60 years in the past, when archives are opened, you tend to be able to get behind the rhetoric and at the truth”
This is incorrect now that the daily MAGIC briefs to Truman have been fully released. The ‘demonstration’ concept is a myth. The truth is actually a hell of a lot more interesting. What is emerging from the archives now is that the Japanese emerged in late 44 and early 45 with two stunning strategic triumphs over the Allies. These were Iwo Jima and Okinawa: tactical defeats and Grand Strategic victories for Japan. Because of these, the US High Command realised that Operation OLYMPIC was a dead duck, it could not succeed with 9 IJA Divisions on the beaches to face the 9 US Divisions to come ashore, and they had no way to stop the 8000-10000 kamikazes allotted to Kyushu, and Operation CORONET was simply a fantasy. SO Marshall’s plan to actually invade Japan was unworkable, bringing Nimitz’s plan for blockade and bombardment out as the only viable option. The turn-around in Operation STARVATION resources and timings, which has puzzled historians for years (Curtis LeMay changed his mind from strategic bombing to tactical mining???) is also now explained. SO is the hitherto unexplained unlimited funding give from 1946 to Project BUMBLEBEE, of course.
Very luckily, there was a third alternative, the nukes. Thank God they were used, too, with apparently 250,000-400,000 Asian civilians dying monthly in areas occupied by the IJA, and the mass slaughter of Allied PoW and internees already underway.
Under Nimitz’s plan, the only possible alternative was to starve Japan in to surrender. That meant that the IJA would have to be physically destroyed everywhere outside the Home Islands. SO fighting would have continued everywhere until mid-late 1947 or so. Singapore would probably have been liberated in very early 1946, and Australia would have been cleaning out Pacific islands for years. There were 150,000 IJA troops in Rabaul alone, and they were all ours to deal with!
So the archives now tell us that the 2 nukes (~200,000 enemy dead) saved ~400,000 PoW and internees and perhaps 4.5-7.2 million Asian deaths (excluding Japanese dead) assuming 18 months of additional warfare.
The nuclear attacks on Japan saved one hell of a lot of lives.
See: Why Truman Dropped the Bomb R. Frank, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp
MarkL
Canberra
Mark, the issues are still debated by historians.
However, fortunately, as of Friday last week, many of the archival primary sources are now online at George Washington University’s National Security Archive so interested people can read them for themselves.
Mark
Yes, I have started to delve in to this, and other, material. The correlation of dates on which the decisions were (or had to be) made to alter some of the major operations underway are coherent with what Frank describes, which is interesting.
It does look like OLYMPIC had been canned, and Nimitz’s alternative adopted. I’ll have to dig in to the flow of orders further up the supply chain to get better evidence of that. The next few years of research are going to be interesting.
I’d appreciate the opinions of those on this board with the time to read iton the article above. At least it will interest David Day, his ideas that Macarthur was a dill seems to be borne out if ‘Dugout Doug’ did indeed still support OLYMPIC on the basis that all that SIGINT stuff was wrong! What an astonishing thing if he really did think that.
One thing is clear, we are now due for a major re-appraisal of the last 12-18 months of the War. Luckily, American scholars will deal with much of that. Out here, we need to start two major re-appraisals of our own, Imperial strategy in WWI and the Singapore Strategy.
MarkL
Canberra
I won’t argue the toss with you on it today, Mark – I’m basing my opinion on what I read some time ago and I’m more than happy to revise it in light of further argument/reading. Just don’t have time to do so at the moment! However, I am pleased that some of the key source materials are now easily accessible online in the public domain.
Marks (both), part of it as I understood it was that the Allies realised that the Japanese literally fought to the death for every foot of territory they occupied, and would never surrender – even if facing certain defeat – unless the Emperor ordered them to. The bombs were intended to show that the US had such overwhelming weapons that it could literally stand off and destroy Japan, and to give the peace party in Tokyo something substantial to wave in the Hirohito’s face to induce him to give the order.
I’ll go have a look at the archives as suggested over my break and see how the new material affects my thinking about this.
Yes, Rob, see some of the links at the bottom of the page regarding the thinking of the Japanese on surrender.
Thanks for the links both Marks.
The more I read the more I am confused. I am leaning towards that Hiroshima was necessary but Nagasaki could have been avoided. Indeed if Kyushu had been avoided it would of been a fierce, frightening and bloody battle.
That doesn’t ease any concerns over the use of nuclear weapons. There is an unsettling ambivalence over the issue.
For a different perspective, The Making Of The Atomic Bomb is a great book. It details the development of the atomic bomb starting way in 1933. It is an amazing story (also mentions the research by Japan and Germany into an atomic bomb).
Irant, I suspect we all need to go back and read some more. It is very hard to adjudicate on as you need both a knowledge of the relevant diplomatic and political history and enough context to be able to properly weigh the new sources available. That’s why we need professional historians!
Oh I agree. Trying to work through the documents I was thinking “Who’d want to be a professional historian? To unravel this (without bringing preconceived judgements with you) would be a nightmare.”
Shall do! Meanwhile, I’d like to underline one of the points MarkL made. On a lot of issues, including what ‘actually happened’, and why, we will not be in a position to answer until the classified archives are released. The revelations about the Allies’ success against the German Enigma system – used for high-level command and control communications, and believed by the Germans to be unbreakable – changed our thinking in significant ways about the course of the Second World War, and our understanding of why strategists (political and military) made the decisions they did. Magic, as MarkL pointed out, is another case in point.
More recently, the declassification of the Venona archives ten years ago by the National Security Agency of the US has led inexorably to some re-thinking about the Rosenberg case, the cases of Fuchs and Hiss, and many others, and the extent to which western society really was permeated with KGB agents recruited from the ranks of communist party members and sympathisers in the liberal democracies. Even, terrifyingly enough, to the thought that Senator Joe McCarthy might not have been as lunatically wrong as an unsympathetic history has so far portrayed him as being.
My point being that perhaps we should not presume to know what was on the minds of the key decision-makers before, unless, and until the real facts of their situational awareness are made public.
And I meant to add that it doesn’t stop one from forming an opinion (where would blogging be without it?). But I regard my opinions as always provisional. It has whetted the appetite for some WWI Pacific Theatre history reading.
Errr, I mean WWII. Not sure there was any action in the Pacific during WWI (maybe a few German raiders).
You know, Rob, just because he actually had enemies doesn’t mean he wasn’t a paranoid.
And to come back to the point of this post (sort of), it may just be that there would never have been an arms race, or a nuclear stand-off, or forty years of mutually assured destruction, had CPA members not considered it their ‘progressive’ duty to betray the secrets of the Manhattan Project to the Soviets in the closing years of WWII.
And, liam, not McCarthy’s enemies, but the west’s.
Rob, McCarthyism became more than a battle against communism (though it is obvious the CPA had American members involved in espionage). The House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities activities became a witch hunt that went far beyond combatting a real red menace. Go listen to the Chavez Ravine album mentioned last week for a good example of what went wrong.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were monstrous war crimes. It’s not good enough to say that Truman made a choice that many in his position may also have made.
The justifications that these mega mass murders saved umpteen million lives are fatuous given that they require great hypothetical scenarios to have come true.
Any number of alternative paths were possible. Including not pursuing unconditional surrender. The USA were not compelled to occupy Japan by any other motive than revenge, the normal empire’s desire for a show of might and the chance to get a poweful foothold in the region.
Japan was in all sorts of trouble militarily by this stage as we all know. To play the “they wouldn’t quit unless killed” line is demonising on a grand scale. And too simplistic.
The bombings along with many other war crimes will eventually be accepted for what they were. But that will not be for many many years of course.
Agree Wbb: and even if the opposing line is taken (which is itself confused by Enola Gay also being a salutary warning to the USSR), why Nagasaki?
I’ve got some difficulty with that, William. For a start, it was Japan started the war in East Asia and the Pacific, and it was necessary to defeat them – at a cost, in brutal statistics of war, that maximised their own deaths, and minimised those of the Allies (the good guys, in case we’ve somehow forgotten). Allied commanders had to make decisions on the basis of necessarily imperfect information – no intelligence is perfect or complete – in order to liberate Asia and defeat the Japanese imperialists, without losing an unacceptably large number of their own troops.
Huge losses were taken by all sides in the course of the war. I believe the battle of Stalingrad alone cost something like 650,000 lives (mainly Russian) – more than the cumulative cost of the atomic attacks on Japan. It’s horrible: winning wars is always horrible. But like the war on Gremany, the war on Japan had to be won. The alternative is unthinkable.
On your last point, the use of atomic weapons gainst Japan has long been thought of as the ultimate 20th century crime against humanity, along with the extermination of European Jewry at the hands of the Nazis. I think in the former case that the progressive post-war consensus was wrong. (Not quite sure what it makes of the latter case in these dark days of Zionicide.)
If there is a consensus that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were war crimes, it’s one I’ve never noticed.
Wbb’s fantasy of a future in which his fashionably anti-American views become mainstream is not going to be a reality. Not even many, many years from now, when historical perspective will show the US as one of the great powers for good in the 20th Century.
Bullshit, WBB. The Japanese had been losing for years and simply wouldn’t quit. They had it coming, in spades. And, yes, unconditional surrender was required, just as it was with the other fascist dictatorships. As Mark L correctly points out, no scenario involving invasion of the core of the Japanese archipelago would have produced fewer casualties than the two atomic bombs.
Fyodor, why was “unconditional surrender required”?
I just want you to spell out and challenge your presuppositions.
Of course, it would take no great feats of historical research to work out Popper’s view.
[Godwin's Law violation approaching - alert pre-crime]
Let me put it this way: would you have negotiated with Hitler? The military junta running Japan committed horrendous war crimes in the name of Empire. They were not to be trusted and, frankly, the Japanese needed to be occupied and shown in forceful terms the errors of their ways. They should be eternally grateful they were occupied by the Americans and not the Soviets.
Mark: No argument intended! History is a constant process of revision in the light of developing knowledge, so when new data becomes available, we have to re-assess things. When ‘popularÄô opinions have been formed on the basis of a known set of facts, these ‘popularÄô opinions are often shown to be wrong, when a new fact set comes to light. Think, for example, of how wrong all the 19th century prognosticators were about The Varian Disaster before the recent archeological discoveries at Kalkreise and the amazing discovery of just how extensive Romanisation of Germania was east of the Rhine!
I spent a most interesting evening last night digging thru the online resources you linked to, thanks very much for providing the link. This is not my specific area of research, but is certainly an interesting area, and the ramifications are very surprising. I am haunted by the thought that the Japanese won a strategic victory at Okinawa sufficiently overwhelming to force the effective cancellation of OLYMPIC. If true, that is an amazing example of an assymmetric victory. We need to know if it is true, and I trust various historians are digging in to that now. The next five years of output is going to be interesting.
Like you, I am very pressed for time, and especially for research time. This always seems to be the way.
Rob: this is regrettably true. The IJA and IJN did literally fight to the death. In addition, large fractions of the civilian population on Saipan and Okinawa suicided rather than surrender, as well. Japanese fascism had truly horrible outcomes like that. Without an Imperial rescript ordering their surrender, we would have to have fought and defeated every Japanese garrison in the entire Pacific. That would have been a very long and bloody business. What the bombs did was show Tojo and his ilk that there was a way for the Allies to completely destroy Japan at no heavy cost in Allied military lives. That, it seems (prima facie only), invalidated their successful strategy against invasion — and they did not have an answer. This, it would seem, discredited them militarily and politically and opened the way to surrender as the only way to save the Japanese state.
This new information means that we all have to rethink what we think we know about the end of the war, as both you and Mark say.
We had to do this for the entire history of WWII when we first found out about ULTRA in the 1970s, and that process is still underway at full steam. It will take another fifty years to do, so vast is the topic. Great time to be an historian, because we are finally seeing the information given to the key decision makers that caused them to make their decisions the way they did.
Irant: There was a very interesting little campaign in the Pacific in 1914. We invaded and occupied the German pacific Colonies south of the equator, and our then Japanese allies did the same north of the equator. Very interesting early Australian example of amphibious joint expeditionary warfare.
WBB: Sorry, I cannot agree that using new weapons to end a global war and save innumerable lives was a ‘war crimeÄô by any way the term is normally understood. I donÄôt understand your reasoning that “The justifications that these mega mass murders saved umpteen million lives are fatuous given that they require great hypothetical scenarios to have come true.” In what sense was planning for OLYMPIC or the death toll among Asian civilians in countries occupied by the Japanese “hypothetical”? In what sense was the Sandakan Death march “hypothetical”? The general massacre of Allied PoW had already begun — that was a real war crime. Stopping things like that was NOT a war crime. The Japanese people were ruled by a government indifferent to their suffering, and they were prolonging a lost war to stay in power at the personal level, as the intercepts of the Sato messages make plain. The Tojo Government started a war that had already cost about 17,000,000 dead, and was refusing the end the war because it would remove the Tojo fascists from power and hold them accountable for their actions. The documents show that the only peace they would accept was one where they stayed in power. That was not acceptable, and for very good reason. The NaziÄôs also wanted to stay in power in Germany. That was unacceptable for exactly the same reasons. Rob raises salient issues — I have certainly never seen even a hint among professional historians of a consensus that the nuclear attacks were war crimes, exactly the opposite in fact: they stopped innumerable Japanese war crimes. That said, if you have such evidence from serious historians, post it or links to it and I will certainly consider it on its merits.
MarkL
Canberra
I have to ask you, wbb, what way would you like to die in a war?
Being blown apart by shells; being shot in the legs and then run over by a tank; drowning inside a submarine; being asphyxiated in a fire-raid; being bayonetted whilst tied to a tree; dying of hypothermia etc all stike me as worse or comparable to death by atomic bomb.
The best death you could hope for is a swift one, right?
Unconditional surrender is a thorny one, but the idea is to fundementally change the powerstructure in the defeated nation and to bring those leaders to accountability.
There is a valid argument that the US president or vice president (sorry, for the vagueness) prolonged the war with Germany because, in a speech in 1941 (?), he announced that the allies would only accept ‘unconditional surrender’ from Germany. The Brits at the time would have accepted complete but not unconditional surrender because they were hoping that German Generals would remove Hitler themselves to achieve that goal.
Churchill changed his rhetoric to match that coming from the US, since it had been such an effort to bring the US public onside etc.
The point is that the war with Nazi Germany didn’t start with unconditional surrender as it’s objective.
Further explaination: it would be much harder for the German military code to accept unconditional surrender rather than a negotiated one.
That’s why it was seen as a mistake by many.
I take your point, Harry, but I think in the long run it was better that unconditional surrender was demanded of Germany.
In World War I, there was a negotiated surrender. Many Germans felt that they had not really been defeated but betrayed, and this was a factor in Hitler’s rise to power and the start of an even more devastating war.
With the overrunning of Germany and the rooting out of the Nazis, this situation was avoided. Allied occupation ended up creating a stable and non-aggressive German democracy.
“I take your point, Harry, but I think in the long run it was better that unconditional surrender was demanded of Germany.”
# Yes, the positioning of western troops in that part of the world was extremely important at holding the USSR back – they, after all, were making a naked grab for land.
The invasion of Italy was launched with the intention of getting western armies into southern Europe before eastern troops could get there.
This was another reason for the anger at Eisenhower’s broad-front way of advancing. He was copping a lot of pressure to win the war (and get western troops as far east as possible) as fast as possible ie by a big swift movement into the heart of Germany and leave the rest to fall once Germany did. Operation Market Garden was launched to try and hurry things up and the disaster that it turned into put paid to that idea.
The atomic bomb was definately dropped to warn the Russians. No doubt about it. The Japanese had already sent a surrender telegram 3 days beforehand. The fireraids that the yanks were launching against Japanese cities were doing far more real damage than the atomic bombs did – and there was no reason for the yanks to stop them: the scenario would be “Japan. Surrender or we burn another three cities to the ground” Repeat until Japan surrendered. At that stage in the war the yanks were bombing with complete impunity. Nagasaki and Hiroshima had not been touched because they weren’t really worth the effort. Sure, they would have been on the list, but you will recall the slippery wordplay used to justify these cities as targets for the bombs.
The yanks could take all the time they wanted, except that the Soviets had invaded some of the northernmost islands already.
The historical argument is valuable but misses the larger point. If the progress of warfare in the 20th Century can be measured, it’s by the steady involvement of civillians as legitimate targets. As much as I feel the currents days of collateral damage and alleged avoidance of civillian casualities have a mealy mouthed quality, at least it’s a recognition and an improvement. Nuclear weapons do no such thing, they are indiscriminate tools for mass incineration and slow painful death. They should not exist.
Those who wish to proportionalise the deaths at Hiroshima may have a point but only so far as the bombing reflects the technology of the time and the lack of possibility of spiralling retaliation. These comforts are no longer the case and haven’t been for a long time. It amazes me these weapons still exist.
Hiroshima and Auschwitz have a commonality that make them both peculiarly 20th crimes against humanity. Shooting someone in the back of the head is an act and requires a human intervention and a will. The industrial qualities of the atomic bomb and the gas chambers are a deeply evil automation.
I’d recommend visiting Hiroshima. It’s a friendly city and one of the few with trams, the nearby island of Miyajima is a wonder and it has a similar feel to. Stand around ground zero and have a cheer for the end of the war and then think about the children that died, or the Koreans if we’re attributing racial culpability. You might meet somebody who has spent all his life in the city without his family. You could also find out about people’s worst and pettiest qualities in the discriumination that radiation victims received and the years it took for foreign victims to get any recompense. Spend some time pondering whether it should have happened but longer at whether it should happen again.
I agree with you anthony except for:
“Hiroshima and Auschwitz have a commonality that make them both peculiarly 20th crimes against humanity…..The industrial qualities of the atomic bomb and the gas chambers are a deeply evil automation.”
# Again, ‘strategic’ bombing was as indiscriminate as the A-bomb and killed far more people.
“Spend some time pondering whether it should have happened but longer at whether it should happen again.”
# I’m not diminshing what you wrote here, but I think people should go a step further and read “Generals Die in Bed” and question whether we should have war as anything other than the ultimate of last results.
Harry, agreed. I’m exceptionalising the methods, not the madness. Thanks for the book recommendation.
I am loathe to tread on the emotive ground opened up here. The first person who will agree that war is a blooody awful business is someone who has done time on teh two way rifle range.
Such men abhor the idea that war should involve or target civilians indiscriminately. They (and I am being polite) do not like people like ‘Bomber’ Harris, and regard creatures (NKVD, GESTAPO, SS, EINSATZTRUPPEN, KEMPEITAI – well, any Imperial Japanese Army people – MUKHABARAT… as unworthy enemies who should never, ever be taken prisoner.
That is why modern ROE is so strict. We are better than that, and by God it shows. Modern western militaries target with extreme care to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties. This is why our enemies often use civilians deliberately as shields.
I have not been to Hiroshima. But to my mind it is just another targetted city with nothing very special about the means of its destruction. It is simply no different to Coventry, London, Dresden, or scores of others IMHO except in weapons effectiveness terms. Perhaps that might change if I go there, perhaps not.
But I have been to extermination camps, and they ARE horribly special places. So is that beautiful, terrible Sandakan cemetary. Hiroshima was another city destroyed to end a war. A Death Camp was a purpose-built murder factory, Sandakan Cemetary is filled with people who were murdered deliberately when they were entitled to the protection of any even remotely honourable enemy. Big difference, at least to me.
MarkL
Canberra
Wasn’t Hiroshima the main port of the IJN?
I think Hiroshima is different. The destruction of Dresden, London et al was achieved by incredible tonnages of explosive and coordination of bombers. Hiroshima was one bomb. Look at pictures of Dresden after the bombing and then look at pictures of Hiroshima after the bombing. Think about how the destruction came about.
Once the bombing stopped, people stopped being killed in Dresden, London etc. Deaths in Hiroshima continued for years after the war ended as a direct result of the bomb.
There is above a perpetuation of the myth of Total War wherein all is justified. No choice. To the bitter end. Only the result matters. This is seeing history thru a cheap and cracked plastic lens. Rome no doubt had their moral justifications for salting under Carthage too.
Some here say that Hirohito’s Japan was so bad that it had to be decapitated, its leaders executed. And that the best way to do this was to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. The price is immoral.
The tired comment above about my anti-Americanism is easily refuted. I have no reason to doubt that the other powers in the war, Germany, Japan, USSR would have done a similar thing, or worse, if they could. It is a hopeless argument in favor of the bombings that to be opposed is anti-Americanism.
And then to the scenario. Japan was all but defeated. It was looking for an exit strategy. Russia was about to invade. The USA wanted to preempt further Russian involvement. Even Albert Einstein knew this in 1946.
An unconditional surrender may have been nice to get. But not at any cost.
And then the choice of what to bomb. What was wrong with a demonstration. On top of a military target. There are any number of imaginable ways that the force of the bomb could have been deployed but that didn’t require the deaths of 200,000 innocent people.
It may be comforting to be able to psychologically box the atomic bombings off in a neat little package marked “Sad but had to be done”, but it doesn’t advance any of us further along the path of civilisation.
David Tiley in a magnificanet post on the subject remarked that we need to understand the times and that it is hard for us to imagine the conditions that lead to the act. I agree. If I had been Truman I may have done same. But none of that is to say it was right. And there were plenty of people opposed to it at the time.
WBB,
Who was opposed to it at the time?
For myself, knowing what I know now, I would have nuked Japan in a heartbeat. Knowing just what the allies knew then, I wouldn’t have waited so long.
Against its use were Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Leo Szilard, Dwight D Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William Leahy, etc etc
You may know that you would have nuked Japan, but do you know where and how you would have done it? Do you know what your motives would have been? Do you know how you would have felt about it? Do you know which bits of Japan you would have happily nuked? And do you know which members of the Japanese people you would have nuked in a heartbeat?
What’s your point, wbb? The soldiers around the place at the time had a war to win.
Yes, to all but the last one, and that’s irrelevant compared to the Japanese lives, let alone Allied servicemen’s lives, that would have been saved by the action.
They had themselves a war to win. Very Hollywood.
The Japs were trying to get out of the war. It’s just that they weren’t ready to hand over the Emperor Hirohito. The USA did not have to take the all or nothing approach. If it is really about saving lives, then Fyodor you need to think upon the alternatives. If it’s not about the lives then that’s where we differ. For mine you can’t intentionally kill civilians to achieve a military or strategic objective.
Rob’s soldiers had a war they wanted to drive home to a final and gruesome end. Momentum of those years of human slaughter. The USA called all the shots. It was in control except for the coming of the Russians which they needed to forestall.
The bombings haven’t got bad press yet because the occupation went well and Japan rose from the ashes. I don’t believe the psychological scarring has been dealt with yet. Both sides are still in denial.
The Japanese feels aggrieved – one of the reasons it hasn’t properly faced up to its own crimes yet.
Unconditional surrender was required of Japan, just as it was of Germany, for the same reasons. If you deny this you’re ignoring the much greater crimes against humanity committed by their military governments. The facts of the last stages of the war with Japan have already been discussed. How to force the Japanese to surrender when they’d rather die fighting? Killing civilians in a terrifying display of destructive power did the trick, and we and the Japanese are better off for it.
The Japanese are in denial about a lot of things that happened in WWII. Your suggestion that it’s because they feel “aggrieved” is pure bullshit, and the statement disgusts me. Successive Japanese governments since WWII have refused to allow schools to teach the truth about Japanese aggression, brutality and crimes against humanity because these truths are embarassing and “inconvenient”. It’s a shameful situation, and educated Japanese who learn the truth are horrified by what their government and their people did in the name of the emperor. I’ve met many, and they don’t feel as aggrieved as you seem to think.
Who was opposed to it at the time?
Fyodor, if your question relates to unconditional surrender, a lot of people were opposed to it at the time. In part because the concept was invented by Wilson in WW1 and the consequence was WW2.
If your question relates to the use of nukes, then there was significant opposition from scientists and within government and the military, as wbb says. Obviously it wasn’t public.
Mark,
My question didn’t; it related to atomic bombing, and WBB answered that question.
There’s nothing modern about unconditional surrender, and it was not demanded of Germany in WWI – the Treaty of Versailles was negotiated.
I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned Ganesa, lord of hosts, remover of obstacles, and god of wisdom. Just saying.
Fyodor – the sense of aggrievement I mean is more a repressed sense of trauma than an outward feeling of being wronged. In that sense, tt is hardly bewildering as a statement. I don’t say that their crimes are justified as a consequence. I agree that they have failed to come to terms with their brutal aggressions. But the level of destruction wrought upon them – no matter how much we may judge they deserved it – may have destroyed the emotional space to deal with the whole history of that war, make amends and move on.
Sometimes the price demanded and paid by victory and defeat are too harsh. I think the bombings (and not just the atomic stuff) were over the top. But the carnage in Okinawa had set the mood and I understand that it was always going to be a fight to the bitterest of ends.
Still, not the way a truly great leadership would have done things. Our common perception that Japan was a militaristic nation beyond reason is caricature. The bestiality of the Japanese troops in China is undeniable. The innocence of the children in Hirosihma likewise.
War is hell, WBB. The USA didn’t start that one, but it damn well finished it. I’m grateful.
shorten this site abit there is to many information
Living in Hawaii, we tend to get a fair bit of info on WWII, because of Pearl Harbour, large Japanese population etc. It may be of interest that over the last couple of years there have been reports that Japan did not surrender because of the atomic bombs. What is now being claimed by some is that the Japanese were pushing for a conditional surrender with the Americans before the bombs were dropped because with the war in Europe now over, the Soviets were turning their heads towards Japan and the Japanese knew they could not combat the Americans fron the Pacific and the Soviets from the west. Hirohito and the war generals cared nothing for the general population, they just wanted to save their own necks, hence the conditions.
If using the Nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that killed 300,000 is justified in saving the lives of “good people”.
Its a good weapon to have by good people all over the world. So these good people can defend their good folks against eeil people and save their own good people.
Manny
Apropos Mark’s comment
I was born in 1962 – not quite a baby boomer, bot quite a gen Xer – if you put any store by those glib catagories, but as one who grew up and came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I have to say that the threat of the world disappearing in a termo-nuclear flash hung over everything like portent of doom. I would up doing what seemed to me to be the only rational thing – I took lots of drugs lots of the time. OK, with hindsight it was probably a mistake, but at the time it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Thew only trouble was that after the wall came down and the cold war came to halt it took me the best part of the next 15 years to stop taking drugs…
Cheers…
How I learned to love the bomb.For mine I am only sorry Oppenheimers little toy hadn’t been operational a few years earlier.That way they could have dropped the fucker on Berlin and,oh I don’t know maybe Dresden.,hey what’s in a name. WW2 my family payed plenty in deaths,so tell me to fuck off!That I give a fuck.
Paul, it has been common knowledge for a long time that the Japanese (or at least the peace faction within their government, who were in a minority) were seeking conditional surrender when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The problem for the Allies was that the conditions that the Japanese sought included the retention of their militaristic form of government, the retention of their colonies of Korea and Manchukuo (Manchuria) that their armed forces would not be disarmed by the allies and that they would try any persons accused by the Allies of war crimes, all conditions which were utterly unacceptable to the Allies, which is hardly surprising given Japan’s conduct prior to and during the war.
Even after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet attack on its army in Manchuria the Japanese sought to place a condition on its acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration that in accepting the terms of the Declaration it did so on the basis that this would in no way impinge on the Emperor’s pregrogatives as sovereign ruler, in effect the retention of the militarist system that had got Japan into war in the first place and a direct contradiction of the Declaration’s terms. Happily Truman nipped that in the bud by providing the clarification that the Emperor and the Imperial Japanese Government would be under the orders of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Douglas MacArthur- setting one divinity to rule over another one, as James Byrnes, Truman’s Secretary of State drily commented.
wwb has listed a number of scientists and Generals who were against the use of the atomic bombs, none of whom were at any risk of actually dying if the bombs had not been dropped and the war had dragged on to an invasion of the Japanese home islands, which was the alternative. The expected Allied casualties from that invasion based upon the experience in Okinawa was in the order of half a million. Japanese casualties including, of course, innocent children just like those in Hiroshima, were expected to be at least an order of magnitude greater. It would have been completely irresponsible for Truman to have disregarded that loss of life, and especially the loss of lives of American soldiers, sailors and airmen in exploring alternatives to bring the war to an end.
Given the alternatives of negotiating a conditional surrender, however protracted those negotiations might be, with war still being fought and with Allied casualties mounting, as the negotiations dragged on and/or an invasion of the Japanese home islands at horrendous cost, the precipitation of the end of the war by the destruction of two Japanese cities by atomic bombs seems to have been the least of all evils and on that basis a very moral act.
wbb’s statement that
is touchingly naive . It is a sentimental view not informed by any knowledge as to how Japan was governed at the time of WW2. Many and indeed most of Japan’s population may well have been pacificists, and probably were by the time their cities had been reduced to cinders by American fire-bombing in 1945 but that was a minor consideration to their leadership in determining the conditions on which they would end the war.
Well this old thread is proving to have a persistant half life.
Personally, if I was alive and a player back then during the nastiest time in human history so far, I’d have said nuke ‘em.
Now I’m not so sure. But I’m damn glad I’ve never been a position where I had to be sure about being sure about such shit
Why not send a 40 kiloton device to my PO Box, let me play with it a bit and then I’ll give ya’ll a considered (and very loud) opinion?
Well, “a 40 kiloton device to my PO Box” should get Echelon’s attention. Hello Chrissie, Dale and that fat guy with the goatee, the vintage Dead Kennedys’ T-shirt and $500 runners.
Ha !!! interesting to read back this old thread (I was ‘rex bellator’ in those days). GregM’s comment I believe is quite salient — that the USA had already destroyed many Japanese cities with convential weapons, the only substantative difference with Hiroshima is that it only required one bomb and two planes, rather than a whole air wing of B-29s.
Since this discussion was originally conducted I have viewed Errol Morris’ documentary “Fog Of War: 11 Lessons from the life of Robert S MacNamara”, and the first half contains interesting observations about the bombing campaign on which Lt Col MacNamara worked under the command of General Curtis Le May. (Le May’s character seems like the General straight out of Catch-22).
As long as possessing the Nukes has a perceived profit of safety and power (The security council Veto), others would seek the nukes.
Unless and until nukes are made as unkosher as Biological weapons.. the NPT and the NPT cheerleaders can go take a hike.
Manny