Military Buffs I need your help.

[Chronon]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
i suppose i should find a good history book or two and add it to my mental note to reread up on physics and astronomy one of these days. any suggestions?

On the diplomatic reasons for dropping the bomb try Martin J. Sherwin "A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance." It's an excellent history of atomic policy within the United States, and the beginning of the Cold War. Some would call it a "revisionist history," but I think it's a very cogent argument. Martin Rhodes has a number of good (but huge) books about building of the bombs. You could also try Lawrence Badash "Scientists and the Development of Nuclear Weapons," a very readable account of the science behind the bomb, the making of the bomb, and the scientific community.

"Revisionist history," by the way, is usually what historians' whose arguments are being superceded (and/or contradicted) by more recent work tend to call the new arguments. Often it has pejorative connotations.

As Erax has so eloquently pointed out, it is misleading to judge the decision to drop the bomb using our current assumptions about nuclear weapons. When exploring historical questions, the context is all important.

Historical context is the main reason why I, sadly, cannot agree with you Atrocities about history being 20/20. Historians are human, and like everyone else (including scientists, by the way) we are influenced by the culture in which we live (the historical context). Historians working in the immediate post-war period were living in an extremely nationalistic culture, had very little access to secret documents, and were loath to criticize the government. It is no surprise that they followed the party line on the bomb. It took some time for the documents to become available, and when they did the history of the bomb was "revised." This is natural; historians are constantly working out new interpretations of past events, based on new evidence and more extensive exploration of historical cultures.

This is not to say that any one interpretation (traditional or revisionist) is definitively correct. On most large historical questions there are no truly right answers, but different interpretations of the events. This can be frustrating but it's what makes debates about the bomb (and evolution and eugenics, to name a few others) so interesting. We can have alot of fun arguing about them for a long, long time.

[Chronon]

Wow! That's three Posts in the time it took me to write the Last one. Thanks for the link, Gecko - excellent material there.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by rextorres:
That the bomb ended the war is a myth that we Americans like to tell ourselves. The US was already killing 100,000s of civilians every night from fire bombings in the capital cities so please don't give me any altruistic crap about saving innocent civilian lives.

The Japanese were actually ready to surrender - they just wanted a guarantee that Hirohito would not be tried as a war criminal. The US would not agree to this. The US, however, agreed to this condition AFTER the bomb was dropped mainly because we didn't want the Russians to know that we were out of them.

We simply dropped the bomb out of revenge as Atrocities inadvertantly and explicitly highlights AND probably more importantly to show the Russians that we were willling to use them.

AND didn't want the Russians to take too much territory on the mainland of Asia. They had declared war as agreed and were advancing into the lands held by the Japanese. As in Europe they were not likely to let go of anything they took, even if they used proxies to hold it. Look at the course of events in Korea.

What if the Russians managed to get a foothold in Japan itself before the US could take control? That was a big risk if there was to be a long, bloody conquest. So you can see the incentive to accept this condition. And they actually turned it into an 'advantage' by turning the Emperor into a spokesman for their modernization campaign.

[ December 11, 2003, 18:02: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[geoschmo]

Of course this can be written off as self-justification, but the use of the two bombs may have indeed helped humanity in the long run. The history of man has been a long series of bloody conrfontations with progressivly more efficent technology developed to destroy each other. Once we used the two we had, the temporary lack of additional devices, and the war ending gave us time to consider them and gain perspective about their use. Later conflicts have all had the spectre of nuclear holocaust hanging over us, but we have figured out a way to avoid using them.

One could come up with a very plausible alternate history in which the US did not use the bomb on Japan. The war of course would have still ended, perhaps a little later, perhaps a lot. The cold war would have still likely occured, but perhaps without the perspective given by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there would have been less hesitance to use them. In this case it wouldn't have been a nuclear power using two bombs against a non-nuclear power. Once the first one was used, the other side would have the incentive to retaliate, and means to do so. Instead of two cities nuked at the end of a war, it might have been 20, or 200 before it was all over.

[rextorres]

[quote]Originally posted by Atrocities:

RexTorres, that has got to be the most conspiritorial revisionistic comment that I have ever read. Seriously I am ROTFLMAO. Thanks for the humor man.

Narratio - Well spoken. Thank you.

Atrocities - dropping the a-bomb wasn't meant to save civilian lives - I guess it's hard for flag wavers to admit that the U.S. was already killing hundred of thousands of civilian lives - not admitting THIS is revisionist.

The Japanese were already shocked and awed and just needed a way to surrender.

Here is a quote from President Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert, August 11, 1945 that talks about the revenge factor.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistle...mall/mb13a.htm

Also we didn't tell the Japanese we had an A-bomb until AFTER we dropped it so there was no way they would have known what was coming. Those leaflets you are so proud of were not dropped until AFTER Hiroshima. So the Japanese were not given any warning prior to the dropping in Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened only 3 days later not enough time for them to even think about the first bomb's effects.

Just because I don't agree with you that the Japanese deserved getting hit with an A-bomb doesn't make me wrong.

On the bright side - it probably stopped a nuclear war with the Russians.

[ December 11, 2003, 19:14: Message edited by: rextorres ]

[Wardad]

I read that there were only two potential landing sites for an invasion of Japan (main island) and these were well defended. The Japanese also believed the Divine Wind (typhoon) would also protect them from invasion, as it did against the Mongols.
http://danielroy.tripod.com/cgi-bin/...olia/opi2.html

The bombs demonstrated that landing defenses could easily be shattered. The bombs could not be stopped by typhoon.

I am sure that some military men lost the desire to see it through to the bloody end because of the bomb. It is one thing to sacrifice yourself, another thing to sacrifice yourself in vain, and worse to sacrifice yourself and everything you are fighting for.


BTW: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq102-6.htm
Okinowa was hit by a typhoon a month after the Japanese surrender. A lot of material was lost, a lot of ships were scrapped, and there was a loss of life.
But, it was nothing compared what could have happen if the island was full of troops, planes and ships preparing for an invasion. The survivors would have been defenseless.

[ December 11, 2003, 19:20: Message edited by: Wardad ]

[Parasite]

Originally posted by Prince Xizor:
"It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past -- a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice." - General Douglas MacArthur [surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri, Sep. 2, 1945]

With help from the prince, this came up...

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarth...cspeech04.html

[Cyrien]

What is this I keep hearing about the US only having the two atomic bombs? Even while the US was bombing it was producing more atomic cores for a sustained atomic bombing effort if Japan failed to surrender. The next one was scheduled to be shipped from Los Alamos and arrive for use against Japan on August 17 or 18. There was a whole list of potential targets. The leaflets were deployed after the first atomic bomb was dropped warning other Japanese cities to evacuate. The leaflets scheduled for Nagasaki didn't get their until August 10 which would have been before the original schedule for bombing but the schedule was moved up due to bad weather forcasts, and of course Nagasaki was the backup target. The primary target had been the Kokura Arsenal however weather prevented the bombing of that target and Nagasaki was the only backup target which weather permitted the bombing of.

I won't go into the morality of the use of atomic bombs on Japan. Or the morale justification for the Japanese release of the first modern bio weapons over China etc... etc...

A timeline:http://vikingphoenix.com/public/Japa...5/abombchr.htm

Japanese Bio Weapons:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/bw/

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Narf, you are a walking, breathing red herring. You make things interesting. Thank you.

um...thanks????

from one of those sources, it seems like they didn't make any great effort with the leaflets. both that and the short interval's between the bombs lends credence to the theory that the bombs were dropped to kill and terrify. ok, now can anyone point to any official corrospondence that indicates that Japan was ready to surrender? any that indicates that the Japanese emporer was involved in the war crimes? or that the refusal to surrender was hinged on wether or not he'd be charged? and even if so, would that be enough reason to extend the war to get him?

i'm not trying to make a point with the questions, just asking.

[ December 11, 2003, 21:09: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
What is this I keep hearing about the US only having the two atomic bombs? Even while the US was bombing it was producing more atomic cores for a sustained atomic bombing effort if Japan failed to surrender. The next one was scheduled to be shipped from Los Alamos and arrive for use against Japan on August 17 or 18

I had always told that the US had no more and wasn't likely to have any more for months at best. Don't have anything to support it really, just thought it was common knowledge and accepted it as fact.

Geoschmo