Yes, actually try and put yourself in the shoes of American leadership responsible for making the decision to continue with an invasion of Japan without using nuclear weapons.
American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict.
The U.S. had limited understanding of the full effects of nuclear weapons before using them. The Manhattan Project scientists estimated 70,000 to 100,000 deaths for a medium-sized Japanese city (depending on weather, geography, and building density). These were very rough estimates, focused mainly on blast and heat, not long-term radiation, which was unknowable.
Why is this discussion always a binary choice between a land invasion of Japan or dropping the bombs exactly how we did? For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.
The same result as what? The OP just explained how the bombs being deployed in the manner they were barely led to a surrender.
Anyways, the battle of Okinawa alone killed as many people as both atomic bombs combined and that's the most remote part of (what is today considered) Japan.
I'm sure there could have been other targets that would have led to a surrender but if the goal is to do so with a minimal amount of casualties then i find it extremely difficult to believe that it is possible considering that the two targets which were bombed nearly failed to produce the desired result even after a brutal 8-year war.
You're assuming a linear relationship between civilian casualties and Japanese military leadership's willingness to surrender. Why would e.g. dropping the first bomb on a less-populated shipyard and the second on a city centre have been less effective?
That was Hiroshima. Although there was a high number of civilian casualties it was actually chosen on the basis of its importance to the Japanese imperial army, both as a base and an industrialized city.
>Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military.[117] The city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops.[78] It supported a large war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns.[118]
It wasn’t like they were sitting on a pile of nukes. They had to make the maximum concrete, visceral impact with the couple they had such that there would be minimal second-guessing on the part of Japan.
You are suggesting that they should have selected a target that was virtually guaranteed to have less impact and leverage with a very scarce resource. They couldn’t afford to take that risk with American lives.
>They had to make the maximum concrete, visceral impact with the couple they had such that there would be minimal second-guessing on the part of Japan.
And yet they didn't decide to bomb Tokyo or Kyoto. There was clearly a calculus done in selecting the targets to find the right balance of all the various factors involved. I don't see the problem in questioning whether they came to the right decision. Too often the target selection decision is assumed to be right and the only decision that is questioned is the yes or no of actually going through with the bombing.
Yes, and millions of people survived those bombings. If the only goal was "maximum concrete, visceral impact", a prior bombing would not have eliminated Tokyo from the list of targets for the nuclear bomb which goes to show that there were other factors in play.
They did decide to bomb Kyoto, for exactly that reason. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, objected to it, due to cultural significance, and convinced Truman to choose an alternate, which was Nagasaki.
Yes, I know this and it was part of my point. If "cultural significance" was part of determining bombing sites, then we know "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was clearly not the only goal.
Yes, that was the point I was making. The bombs were not dropped on the largest cities which shows the argument that "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was not the only priority. There was some consideration for civilian casualties which opens up the discussion of whether the right balance was struck.
> The bombs were not dropped on the largest cities which shows the argument that "maximum concrete, visceral impact" was not the only priority.
The atomic bombs were not dropped on the largest cities because the largest cities were already levelled. Nothing would be demonstrable on an already-destroyed city.
> For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.
There weren't many targets left. The US had been fire bombing Japan for months—which did nothing to lead the Japanese leadership to surrender.
The leadership didn't seem to care about losses—or rather the honour of Japan as a country/collective was more important than the losses (?). Some internal Japanese estimates had up to 20M dead from defending against a US landing and the Japanese leadership was fine with that.
This is the type of argument that immediately folds in on itself. If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?
> If they didn’t care about civilian losses, why do people believe the civilian losses in these bombings were necessary? Why is it assumed that the US needed to kill civilians and ended up killing just the right amount of civilians to force surrender?
The number of people killed (civilian and military) was irrelevant. The fire bombings killed as much, if not more, people. The Japanese leadership didn't care about numbers: after the first bomb dropped the War Cabinet ignored it thinking it was a bluff on the US part, and they didn't have any more bombs.
It was only after the second bomb that they started re-considering. Even then, after two bombings, the War Cabinet was still deadlocked at 3-3. The Emperor had to be called in to break the stalemate.
The difference was in the psychological effect of a new type of weapon. From Hirohito's statement:
> Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
I would recommend reading the book, which goes over the Japanese government deliberations using internal Japanese minutes/documents and interviews of those involved:
You are not engaging with the heart of the question. If "The number of people killed (civilian and military) was irrelevant", why do you think it was necessary that they were killed? If "The difference was in the psychological effect of a new type of weapon", why could the goal of forcing surrender not be accomplished by demonstrating that new weapon in a way that wouldn't kill hundreds of thousands? Why are options like dropping the bomb in Tokyo Bay, further off the coast, or in less populated areas not treated as serious alternatives? Why did the bombs have to be dropped on cities?
> Why are options like dropping the bomb in Tokyo Bay, further off the coast, or in less populated areas not treated as serious alternatives? Why did the bombs have to be dropped on cities?
To show their destructive power. That one plane could do as much damage as dozens / hundreds.
What would blowing up water show? What would blowing up an empty field show? What would blowing up an already-flatten city (like Tokyo) show? There is no shock value to dropping an atomic bomb on a non-target.
Arthur Compton, the scientist who led the plutonium side of the Manhattan Project recalled that:
> It was evident that everyone would suspect trickery. If a bomb were exploded in Japan with previous notice, the Japanese air power was still adequate to give serious interference. An atomic bomb was an intricate device, still in the developmental stage. Its operation would be far from routine. If during the final adjustments of the bomb the Japanese defenders should attack, a faulty move might easily result in some kind of failure. Such an end to an advertised demonstration of power would be much worse than if the attempt had not been made. It was now evident that when the time came for the bombs to be used we should have only one of them available, followed afterwards by others at all-too-long intervals. We could not afford the chance that one of them might be a dud. If the test were made on some neutral territory, it was hard to believe that Japan's determined and fanatical military men would be impressed. If such an open test were made first and failed to bring surrender, the chance would be gone to give the shock of surprise that proved so effective. On the contrary, it would make the Japanese ready to interfere with an atomic attack if they could. Though the possibility of a demonstration that would not destroy human lives was attractive, no one could suggest a way in which it could be made so convincing that it would be likely to stop the war.
Even with dropping the first bomb the Japanese War Cabinet wasn't willing to consider surrendering. It took two bombings for the message to sink in (and even then it was a 3-3 tie, and the Emperor had to be called in to break the stalemate): that is the fact any counterfactual has to contend with, that the two bombings barely got the ball over the line.
And even after the Emperor and Cabinet had made the decision there were still people willing to fight on and overthrow the government:
>To show their destructive power. That one plane could do as much damage as dozens / hundreds.
>What would blowing up water show? What would blowing up an empty field show? What would blowing up an already-flatten city (like Tokyo) show? There is no shock value to dropping an atomic bomb on a non-target.
Is knocking down buildings the only way people can perceive the power of a bomb? Would a huge mushroom cloud over Tokyo Bay not be shocking? Could that "psychological effect of a new type of weapon" you mentioned in the previous post have been intensified if the Japanese War Cabinet saw that mushroom cloud with their own eyes?
>Arthur Compton, the scientist who led the plutonium side of the Manhattan Project recalled that...
That is an argument against "an advertised demonstration". It is not an argument for killing a hundred thousand civilians. Why wouldn't "the shock of surprise" apply to a demonstration that happened without notice? Why are you presenting this as a binary choice between "an advertised demonstration" and dropping the bomb on a city?
>Even with dropping the first bomb the Japanese War Cabinet wasn't willing to consider surrendering. It took two bombings for the message to sink in (and even then it was a 3-3 tie, and the Emperor had to be called in to break the stalemate): that is the fact any counterfactual has to contend with, that the two bombings barely got the ball over the line.
You keep on repeating this as if the decision being close means that any deviation from the history would have caused them to reach a different conclusion. You have no way of knowing that. I don't know why you seem to believe that the only path to surrender was the exact events that transpired.
>I don't know why you seem to believe that the only path to surrender was the exact events that transpired.
Maybe dropping the bombs in Tokyo Bay would have changed things. Maybe writing the emperor a love song would have changed things. We don't know. There are two aspects that get mixed together with this.
>Given the situation and knowledge at the time, was this or that military action reasonable and necessary?
>Knowing things unknowable at the time, can we now say this or that military action was unnecessary?
I think it is clear that the first question is yes, it was a reasonable and necessary decision at the time.
The second question is interesting to think about, but I think you are getting so much pushback because you are mixing both questions, using after the fact "what ifs" to say what people should have done at the time, as if they could just try different things and get a do over if it didn't work.
>I think you are getting so much pushback because you are mixing both questions, using after the fact "what ifs" to say what people should have done at the time
What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings? If anything, that other person's insistence on focusing on the exact votes of Japanese leadership is more reliant on hindsight than anything I have said.
> What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings?
Of course they could, and they did consider many options. But they only had a couple of bombs and any additional ones were weeks away. We know now that the bombs helped to end the war but they didn’t know then that they would. Detonating the bombs with no result could be looked at similar to firring your limited ammunition over your enemy’s head to hope it makes them surrender, but if it doesn’t, you have less ammo to fight them.
Firebombing leveled over 60 Japanese cities and killed between 330,000 and 900,000 people (though we will never know for sure because the very records needed were obliterated in the conflagrations). Yet leading up to the atomic bombings, Japan was well underway preparing Operation Ketsu-Go, the Japanese defense of the home islands, meant to inflict immense casualties on the American troops and undermine the American publics’ will to continue fighting [1]. Japan planned to lose a million men in this operation, and enlisted every male age 15 to 60 and every female age 17 to 40 in and around Kyushu [2]. There is no reason to believe this wouldn’t happen, given what we saw in Okinawa, where children were mobilized, civilians died by the tens of thousands in the crossfire (since Japan would not evacuate them intentionally to increase casualties), and civilians killed themselves by the hundreds rather than be captured [3].
Americans and Japanese were dying every second the war went on. Wasting your most powerful weapon, that you have almost none of, with your fingers crossed that this will make the country, where not one military unit has surrendered during the entire course of the war, just give up. This is naiveté and hindsight bias at its finest.
[1] “We will prepare 10,000 planes to meet the landing of the enemy. We will mobilize every aircraft possible, both training and "special attack" planes. We will smash one third of the enemy's war potential with this air force at sea. Another third will also be smashed at sea by our warships, human torpedoes and other special weapons. Furthermore, when the enemy actually lands, if we are ready to sacrifice a million men we will be able to inflict an equal number of casualties upon them. If the enemy loses a million men, then the public opinion in America will become inclined towards peace, and Japan will be able to gain peace with comparatively advantageous conditions”- IGHQ army staff officer in July 1945, from “The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II, July/August 1945” by Stanley Weintraub
What happened to those two distinct questions? What point were you trying to make in your previous comment? I specifically asked for clarification on your comment and instead of answering that direct question, you went right back to debating the original issue, even merging the two questions in the exact way that you complained about me doing it.
It is also bizarre how much of this discussion is had purely from a US-Japanese perspective as if the Soviet Union declaring war on Japan wasn't even worthy of a footnote.
>What have I mentioned here that couldn't have been considered before the bombings?
That is what you asked and I answered that those things you mentioned were considered and address multiple things you mentioned in your other comments.
Roughly 18 potential cities were considered, which were narrowed down to a shortlist of five, and eventually finalized into four reserved targets (Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki as alternate).
> American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict.
Per Barrett, some Japan leadership said that as many as 20M Japanese (civilians) would die in a defence of an invasion (but also because of starvation and such), and the leadership was fine with that.
Many of the top US generals at the time thought that the blockade and imminent Soviet invasion would have been enough to force the Japanese into surrender. The land invasion comparison was propped up as a good "justification" for dropping the bomb, though.
