Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings justified?

Soldato
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Yes they were justified as the other option was a prolonged war with untold numbers dead due to Japanese mentality of "no surrender" it's worth noting it took 2 nuclear bombs to get them to surrender, not one, which pretty much says it all about their mindset at the time considering the destructive power witnessed from the first bomb
 
Caporegime
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Yes and no. Hope that helps! :D
Scholars were today rocked by recent views shared on a computer forum which indicated strongly that matters involving tens of millions of lives and innumerable and unknowable options and outcomes could not be reduced to a simple and simplistic yes/no answer. After careful deliberation and perhaps an unintended and open view of the matter, popular forums poster ianh said, "yes and no". More as it happens ...
 
Man of Honour
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I often wondered how they did the safety setup during the Manhattan project. Am I'm reading now that they developed a process they called 'tickling the devils tail' where they would manually place increasing amounts of neutron reflective material around the uranium, or plutonium, core while scintillation counters would display the radiation activity, they were basically playing 'chicken' with the bomb core seeing how much neutron reflective material it needed close to the core to reach criticality.

It was even worse than that - the core would go supercritical, not critical. The stepped increase in neutron reflection wasn't granular enough for just criticality, even if the experiments happened flawlessly. Which was impossible to guarantee because they were being done manually in, and I can't stress this enough, a fail-dangerous configuration. I'm genuinely surprised they did that. I know almost nothing about the subject, but I know enough to make damn sure any experiment was fail-safe to at least a reasonable extent. It wasn't even a particularly hard thing to do with the criticality experiments, at least not to a reasonable extent. You'd just need to construct the experiment in a way that ensured that in the event of failure the reflectors would drop away from the core rather than towards it. Which is what they did later, but why on earth didn't they do it from the start? They knew it was extremely dangerous, so it wasn't ignorance.

Sadly two scientists died when the core emitted a burst of radiation.

In two seperate incidents several months apart and the scientist doing it the second time knew very well what would happen because he knew it had already happened. He watched the other scientist die. And then he did something even more pointlessly dangerous (the screwdriver thing I mentioned earlier). He knew. It's reported that his first words after the incident were "That's it, then". He knew how dangerous what he was doing was and he knew it had killed him. Why do it? Just why? It wasn't even useful, let alone necessary, to construct and conduct the experiments in such a dangerous way.

The death toll might have been higher. Those two died directly from radiation sickness. Others who were nearby at the time died later from things that might have been caused by their lower but still dangerous exposure to radiation in the incidents. In both cases, the scientist who caused the accident knowingly increased their own exposure to reduce the risk to others, directly handling the equipment that they knew would be very hot and very radioactive. Quick-thinking and brave. Bloody foolish to put themself in that situation, but quick-thinking and brave in dealing with it. A photo of Slotin's hand afterwards is publically available. It's a very bad thing to see.


A good brief summary.
 
Caporegime
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Short answer: no. Long answer: also no, but in more detail (see below).

Let's review the situation in August 1945, just before Little Boy and Fat Man were dropped:

* Japan's navy and air force have both been destroyed
* Japan has no capacity to project military power beyond her borders
* Japan is blockaded
* Japan's supply lines are completely cut off
* Japan has run out of resources
* Japan has run out of money
* Japan's allies have been defeated
* Japan has lost all the territory she captured during the war
* Japan's air defences have been completely wiped out; she has no way to defend herself against air raids
* Japan has suffered 20 months of bombing by the Americans, who dropped 157,000 tons of bombs during that time
* Tokyo has been decimated by a massive firebomb run, which killed 100,000 and made 1 million homeless in a single night (the most destructive bombing raid in human history)

In short: Japan is utterly defeated. Invasion is unnecessary; the Allies can simply wait for her surrender. They have all the time in the world. Japan is no longer a threat. The only thing required at this point is to negotiate terms.

Now let's wind the clock back a little further.

In mid July, Japan approached the Russians with an offer of surrender, and a request for the Russian government to act as mediator.

The Soviets did not mention this to the Allies, and stalled the Japanese while continuing to build up troops in Manchuria. Their goal was to invade Hokkaido and take over Japan before the Allies could intervene. This plan was devised by Admiral Ivan Yumashev, and you can read it here. Soviet submarines were already in place, and the Russians expected to commence operations on the 24th of August.

The Russians would have got away with the invasion a few months earlier, when the US War Department conceded that it could be wise to let the Soviets occupy Hokkaido and part of Honshu.

But by August, the atom bombs were ready, and Truman knew the Russians could not stop him. Deeply concerned by the implications of Soviet dominance in the region, he decided the bombs would serve as an appropriate warning about what could happen if the USA's geopolitical goals were thwarted. Some historians now believe this was a miscalculation:

Seventy years on, evidence suggests that even if Truman did intend to intimidate Stalin, he was unsuccessful. Stalin’s retreat at Hokkaido was a major concession made in spite of Hiroshima — a late effort by the Soviet dictator to patch up the rapidly unraveling relationship with the United States.

(Source).

Truman sent a message to Stalin, insisting that the US must retain air base rights on some of the central islands, and that a partial Soviet occupation would be permitted at the discretion of MacArthur (you can read it here).

Stalin deliberated until the 22nd of August (just two days before the planned invasion) when he cancelled the Yumashev operation via a message relayed by Marshall Aleksandr Vasilevsky (you can read it here).

I have provided this backstory to prove a critical point: the Russians had already assessed Japan's capacity for resistance, and deemed it inadequate. Stalin was satisfied that the Russians could invade successfully, without unacceptable losses on either side. Stalin's view was also held by most US military officials at the time, a fact that did not emerge publicly until after the war was over.

In short, the Soviets and the American high command both knew:

* Japan was beaten
* Japan was prepared to surrender
* Invasion was unnecessary
* Invasion was nevertheless a viable option

This flatly refutes the claims initially presented by America as justification for dropping the atom bombs.

To this day, you will hear nonsense about the 'need' to invade; that invasion would have resulted in cataclysmic losses; that the bombs were a humane alternative which prevented huge loss of life, and ended a war that could not otherwise have been stopped.

None of this is true.

Finally, we have the testimony of US government officials and military personnel.

Dwight Eisenhower said:
...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.

I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.

It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'.

Dwight Eisenhower]I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.

Admiral William D. Leahy said:
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

Admiral William D. Leahy]The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

Herbert Hoover said:
[To President Truman]I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan—tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists—you'll get a peace in Japan—you'll have both wars over.

Herbert Hoover said said:
The Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945 on these different occasions up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs.

Herbert Hoover said:
I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.

Norman Cousins was consultant to MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan:

Norman Cousins said:
When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been?

He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.

John McCloy was Assistant Secretary of War:

John McCloy said:
I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch, and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted.

...I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs.

Ralph Baird was Under Secretary of the Navy:

Ralph Baird said:
I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted.

...In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn't have been necessary for us to disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not dropped the bomb.

Lewis Strauss was Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy:

Lewis Strauss said:
I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate...

My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic. ...It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world.

Paul Nitze was Vice Chairman of the US Strategic Bombing Survey:

Paul Nitze said said:
While I was working on the new plan of air attack... I concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945.

Paul Nitze said:
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.

Leo Szilard was the nuclear scientist responsible for the technology behind the atom bomb:

Leo Szilard said:
I told Oppenheimer that I thought it would be a very serious mistake to use the bomb against the cities of Japan. Oppenheimer didn't share my view.

Elias Zecharias was Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence:

Elias Zecharias said:
Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia. Washington decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to use the A-bomb.

I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.

General Carl Spaatz said:
If we were to go ahead with the plans for a conventional invasion with ground and naval forces, I believe the Japanese thought that they could inflict very heavy casualties on us and possibly as a result get better surrender terms.

On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place [and] that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time.

Brigadier General Carter W. Clarke said:
We brought [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Examples could be multiplied. The bottom line is that all of the top US military leaders involved in the dropping of the atom bombs subsequently stated that the bombs were unnecessary from a military perspective.

Even the lunatics at the Mises Institute are smart enough to know this.
 
Soldato
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yes, although revisionist historians want you to believe otherwise.

I wonder what would have happened if Nagasaki was not bombed.
The war would have dragged on for at least another few years, millions more would have died, and we may have ultimately lost.

You shouldn't also underestimate the long lasting impact the bombings had, at the time it was about stopping the war, but it can be realistically argued that the bombings changed the world in a positive way. The mere prospect of a nuke attack is so horrific that it did ultimately lead to a preference of diplomacy over all out war.
 
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Soldato
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yes, although revisionist historians want you to believe otherwise.


The war would have dragged on for at least another few years, millions more would have died, and we may have ultimately lost.

You shouldn't also underestimate the long lasting impact the bombings had, at the time it was about stopping the war, but it can be realistically argued that the bombings changed the world in a positive way. The mere prospect of a nuke attack is so horrific that it did ultimately lead to a preference of diplomacy over all out war.

The nazis had already been defeated by the time the bombs were dropped though. Japan just refused to surrender. Losing wasnt going to happen by that point.
 
Caporegime
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It's a lot easier to say that it wasn't when you haven't lived through 4-6 years of total war, people today sitting in their safe spaces afraid of loud clapping criticising those who experienced real terror/trauma and death of family/friends, day in day out, for years on end.

If the same kind of war broke out today and dropping nukes to end it was an option most of the holier than thou people against it then would be begging for it now, just so that they could quickly return to their cushy lives.
 
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Soldato
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ultimately i think it was the right decision, there had to be a first and horrible as it was for japan it's a better alternative than say the first nuclear weapon waiting until cuba before it launched, better bombs, higher yeilds, bigger arsenals. better for the world at large that we saw the absolute devastation these things do before the world was tooled up and ready to annihilate itself.
 
Caporegime
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@Evangelion you clearly have a lot of knowledge about this, can you recommend any decent books to pick up and expand on it.

And to echo Mags comment, great post.

Arguably yes, arguably no.

But it happened and we should reflect on it. That’s all we can do.

Edit - wow what a post by @Evangelion !! Great work, Sir.

Thanks. :)

There are three books I recommend on this subject:

* Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (Gar Alperovitz, 1994)
* The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Gar Alperovitz, 1996)
* Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath (Paul Ham, 2014)

Alperovitz is an exceptional scholar, and arguably the most authoritative voice among scholars who believe that the bombs were unjustified.
 
Associate
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It's an interesting debate. I did an essay on it for my History and Politics degree. Some key points:

  • Due to an agreement between the "Big Three" allied powers at Yalta, Russia was due to invade Japan in August 1945. Rising Soviet influence in Eastern Europe meant that the US wanted to prevent them getting any more countries under their sphere of influence if at all possible.
  • The Japanese were pretty keen to not involve the Russians either
  • The US was also becoming aware of the embryonic Cold War developing with the Soviet Union; negotiations over post-war occupation of European states were already proving difficult. Several US top brass and politicians were keen to use the bombs to demonstrate US military superiority over the USSR, to somehow quell this growing difficulty and gain concessions.
  • There had been dire consequences of over a million Allied casualties if an invasion of the Japanese home islands went ahead. US top brass and politicians agonised over the wrath of public opinion if they found out they'd sacrificed these men when they potentially had a 'war winning' weapon and not used it
  • The war could have ended earlier, without the use of the a-bombs if the Allies had made it clear to the Japanese that they could keep their Emperor; Unconditional surrender was a reasonable stipulation, but losing their Emperor was a major sticking point for most Japanese politicians. If the Allies had emphasised that Japan could keep their Emperor as a purely ceremonial, non-political head-of-state, the bombs would have likely not been necessary.
  • Don't separate the moral question of dropping the a-bombs from the general Allied bombing campaign against Japan, and don't claim that the USAAF campaign - until the dropping of the a-bombs - was in any way morally superior to Bomber Command's bombing campaign against Germany. The Dresden raid was terrible and probably unnecessary, but the USAAF was conducting area bombing raids against Japanese cities using B-29s well before the a-bomb. They were also using incendiary bombs to start large fires, as the Japanese homes were predominantly built of wood, and raids such as several on Tokyo killed many more civilians than the a-bomb raids on Hiroshima or Nagasaki
I could go on. As with most things, it was a combination of a lot of difficult factors. Use of the a-bombs was probably the "least worst" option to expediate the end of a terrible, bloody, total war.
 
Soldato
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Yes. Brought the war in the Pacific to a far swifter and less bloody end than starvation followed by an opposed invasion would have.

People tend to forget that the 7th Air Force had already reduced many Japanese cities to cinders with Le May’s low-level incendiary bombing campaign which killed many more Japanese than the two atomic bombs did.
 
Man of Honour
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@Evangelion that post is far too sensible for GD, get out :p

I enjoyed reading it, thanks.

Of course the next interesting question that links to the growing Russian problem and potential invasion - should the West have invaded Russia, after all, Churchill wanted to?
 
Caporegime
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If they weren't used then they would have been used at a different time anyway. The point is people became aware of their destructive power hense being a nuclear power gives you a defence against other countries that they cannot match. Even when not using it.
 
Soldato
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"You don't win a war by dying for your country... you win it by making the other poor ******* die for his".
I suppose that makes the bombs somewhat justified, even if not entirely necessary...

It should be borne in mind that the two nuclear bombs killed less people than had already been killed by conventional bombing in Japan. Nuclear bombs weren't a sudden escalation from nothing to uniquely apocalyptic.
Fewer...:p

It's not just the big boom and the destruction, though, Nuclear firepower has very nasty and lasting aftereffects. Most places that got bombed were rebuilt, but when you have fallout and the like, it's a considerable game changer. These first two may have been in their infancy in terms of yield, but the world had not seen anything like it before. It was a massive escalation, I'd say.
 
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