Was the first atomic bomb justified?

[Grave_n_idle]

I think I can agree to disagree.

You certainly can.

There's no law that prevents you being wrong, even by choice.

That was not the new normal. If I remember correctly, Hiroshima experienced no campaigns prior to the atomic bomb. The people have not endured it before.

Hiroshima hadn't been a target of bombing, itself - but Hiroshima adapted based on the attacks on other cities.

Feel free to demonstrate that.

That the entire civilian city of Hiroshima was a military target? I think that's self-evident. That the attacking forces tried to reduce casualties? There's no reason to believe that's true.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

I'd have to say no, there was no reason for it, let me outline why. In Japan, even nowadays there are still those that deny they did anything wrong, it's a rather sizeable portion as well, compare to Germany, where it's a widely accepted fact of what happened. Imo the reason it's easier to deny is because the sudden shock of the atomic bomb meant the country as a whole was quickly cowed, people who had no choice but to swear fealty to the government were suddenly set free, and without the gradual revelation of the various atrocities that took place, it became easier to see the atomic bomb itself as an overreaction, a war crime.

Would more soldiers have died? Perhaps, but military indoctrination itself isn't as ingrained as people claim, and wouldn't more have died from retaliatory attacks by Japanese citizens due to the bombing? Remember, there were US soldiers stationed for the occupation. In many ways the humanity of the soldiers is what surprised these people, I remember reading a comic drawn from the point of view of it's writer, who was alive during the war, which spoke specifically of how the Japanese first viewed the Americans as devils and brutes, in line with what their government proposed.

But due to the humanitarian and rebuilding efforts, not to mention the effort they went to of helping the country back on it's feet, the US gained a long term ally, regardless of their previous crimes. A gradual invasion would not have been as hard as everybody proposes, the Japanese military was already running on fumes well before this point, and in any major defence, more men would've died than they could use to put up a proper resistance throughout the entirety of the islands.

Thusly, I believe the humanitarian efforts would have had more impact, and been more readily accepted even, with long term effects that meant these deniers aren't a factor any more. The inferred racism of assuming a Japanese man's mindset was any different to that of a German male's is denying the way they were indoctrinated, the truth is, at the apex of the war, they wanted to test their new weapon, no matter how costly Berlin was to take, civilian casualties had been anticipated just as much by the resistance of the government as lingering resentment of the people, how many Japanese living under the Faux-Empire's rule resented it privately, but had to agree in public?

you also forget the effect fear has, why risk retaliating if the enemy can make you and everything within 50 miles of you vaporize in the blink of an eye.

[Sack Jackpot Winners]

It's also worth noting that during the actual surrender process, there's was an attempted coup to stop it.

Code: Select all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

Surrender only finally happened by the skin of one's teeth.

EDIT: What's up with these links...

[Grave_n_idle]

Unless your an O-6 or above your "strategy" is irrelevant.

I have to point out, I didn't claim it was relevant. Quite the opposite.

Pretty sure it wasn't me that brought that up. It's almost like you just threw in a complete irrelevance.

And like I said before the United States military didn't just print out en mase purple hearts just because of the heck of it. They were the expected casualties and injuries that were going to be sustained in Operation Downfall.

Right. Made-up. That's what I said.

[Uxupox]

Unless your an O-6 or above your "strategy" is irrelevant.

I have to point out, I didn't claim it was relevant. Quite the opposite.

Pretty sure it wasn't me that brought that up. It's almost like you just threw in a complete irrelevance.

And like I said before the United States military didn't just print out en mase purple hearts just because of the heck of it. They were the expected casualties and injuries that were going to be sustained in Operation Downfall.

Right. Made-up. That's what I said.

So what exactly is your point? That they shouldn't have bombed and instead went on with the invasion?

[The Empire of Pretantia]

And like I said before the United States military didn't just print out en mase purple hearts just because of the heck of it. They were the expected casualties and injuries that were going to be sustained in Operation Downfall.

Right. Made-up. That's what I said.

Now you're just trying to dismiss a prediction on the basis that it's a prediction.

[Washington Resistance Army]

Right. Made-up. That's what I said.

Now you're just trying to dismiss a prediction on the basis that it's a prediction.

They're just made up numbers, who needs silly things like casualty estimates.

[Christ the Redeemer]

Now you're just trying to dismiss a prediction on the basis that it's a prediction.

They're just made up numbers, who needs silly things like casualty estimates.

THIS. The point is gr8.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

Now you're just trying to dismiss a prediction on the basis that it's a prediction.

They're just made up numbers, who needs silly things like casualty estimates.

especially considering the fact that the organization who made them is famous for underestimating the loses they would suffer time and time again.

[Saiwania]

The battle of attrition would have been disastrous.

Sure, but if you're the side that has fewer resources, there is a hard limit on how well of a defense you can mount. It is much the same reason why the Germans simply could not stop the Red Army after 1943 at latest and the whole Eastern front collapsed and thus the way to Berlin was wide open. The Japanese were low on ammunition and materiel and were in a poor position to put a stop to the US advance.

Civilians with spears simply cannot be expected to fare well against a well armed and supplied landing force. They'd have been routed worse than the Kwantung army was in Korea, which was supposed to be the IJA's very best remaining formation.

[Rio Cana]

Some have pointed out that the US dropped leaflets to warn civilians to leave the target cities. You do know that in most of the Axis nations, you needed a travel permit to travel. In Japan, the Kempeitai which was the military secret police was responsible for travel permits.

The Kempeitai was responsible for the following:
Travel permits
Labor recruitment
Counterintelligence and counter-propaganda (run by the Tokko-Kempeitai as 'anti-ideological work')
Supply requisitioning and rationing
Psychological operations and propaganda
Rear area security

By 1944, despite the obvious tide of war, the kempeitai were arresting people for antiwar sentiment and defeatism.[11]

They were quite ruthless - read tbis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kempeitai

[Uxupox]

The battle of attrition would have been disastrous.

Sure, but if you're the side that has fewer resources, there is a hard limit on how well of a defense you can mount. It is much the same reason why the Germans simply could not stop the Red Army after 1943 at latest and the whole Eastern front collapsed and thus the way to Berlin was wide open. The Japanese were low on ammunition and materiel and were in a poor position to put a stop to the US advance.

Civilians with spears simply cannot be expected to fare well against a well armed and supplied landing force. They'd have been routed worse than the Kwantung army was in Korea, which was supposed to be the IJA's very best remaining formation.

I don't know the Japanese battle-plan against the allies but it could have been something akin to modern day insurgency. Which is very effective to this date. Who knows.

[Wrapper]

They're just made up numbers, who needs silly things like casualty estimates.

THIS. The point is gr8.

*** DEAT for posting past forum ban ***

Do not post anymore until your ban is up.

[Lady Scylla]

Sure, but if you're the side that has fewer resources, there is a hard limit on how well of a defense you can mount. It is much the same reason why the Germans simply could not stop the Red Army after 1943 at latest and the whole Eastern front collapsed and thus the way to Berlin was wide open. The Japanese were low on ammunition and materiel and were in a poor position to put a stop to the US advance.

Civilians with spears simply cannot be expected to fare well against a well armed and supplied landing force. They'd have been routed worse than the Kwantung army was in Korea, which was supposed to be the IJA's very best remaining formation.

I don't know the Japanese battle-plan against the allies but it could have been something akin to modern day insurgency. Which is very effective to this date. Who knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation ... tsug.C5.8D

[Ardavia]

Just for the record, Operation Downfall's conservative casualty estimates ranged in the hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, and anywhere upward of nine million Japanese to combat (the plans for Ketsu-Go are blood chilling), as collateral, and to mass starvation.

It also called for the use of seven to twenty nukes on industrial and military centers, would have completely wrecked any remaining infrastructure Japan had since it called for the full-scale continuation of strategic bombing campaigns in addition to a gruelling war of attrition across the entire islands, and likely left Japan divided like Germany was.

It's also worth noting the War Cabinet was deadlocked between the hardliners and the pro-peace group (such that the Emperor had to personally intervene to break said deadlock on two occasions, on August 9th and 14th, before they surrendered), and that those hardliners in question were in charge of the military defense efforts.

Oh, and it would be nice if anyone could show any proof of the assertion that Japan was planning to surrender, and that they weren't just trying to make another half-assed negotiation attempt with no Japanese concessions like they'd tried earlier, and a good reason why the US would have let the Japanese Empire get away with any such treaty.

[Uxupox]

I don't know the Japanese battle-plan against the allies but it could have been something akin to modern day insurgency. Which is very effective to this date. Who knows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation ... tsug.C5.8D

28 million. That shit would have been a nightmare.

There was another plan in motion as well.

[Eastern Equestria]

No. The Japanese Empire was no more than a year from collapse with the countless firebombs of its cities. Toyko had been reduced to a dusty grid of broken roads crisscrossing patches of rubble, with the occasional building left to remind people that it had once been a full a city. Many other cities had met the same fate.

The bombings were nothing but excuses for Truman to show off his big, bad nukes to the Soviets.

Wow, lots of historical revisionism in this thread. People are aware that Western leaders, for the most part, were eager to foster peaceful relations with the USSR in the immediate wake of WW II, right? The Soviets initiated Cold War tensions with their annexation of all of eastern Europe.

[Gristol-Serkonos]

Compared to a proposed US invasion of Japan that would result in more casualties in American and Japanese sides, I think the atomic bomb is justified.

[Saiwania]

Oh, and it would be nice if anyone could show any proof of the assertion that Japan was planning to surrender, and that they weren't just trying to make another half-assed negotiation attempt with no Japanese concessions like they'd tried earlier, and a good reason why the US would have let the Japanese Empire get away with any such treaty.

The most solid proof there is, is Naotake Satō's attempt to get the USSR to possibly act as a mediator to try to bring about an armistice with the US rather than an unconditional surrender. The Soviets falsely led him to believe that his efforts might bear fruit but when the time came, they proceeded to declare war on Imperial Japan and invaded Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, along with Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, completely decimating any Japanese units in the Red Army's path.

The Japanese wanted no concessions, that is true. But as time went on, even they recognized that they were increasingly losing any leverage and the final condition they most wanted to hold onto was keeping their emperor. Were it not for uncertainty about what would happen to the Chrysanthemum throne which was supposedly unbroken for over 1,000 years, the Japanese likely would have more readily sued for peace.

[Seraven]

I am one of the believers that the first atomic bomb was justified, since if a conventional invasion was used, the war was projected to go on for 2 to 3 more years. I also believe the first bomb being dropped, even though killing many people, saved the lives of over 2 million more. If the war was to go on, the projected cost of human life would be 3 million lives. It ended the war short, and saved lives in the process. I'm not asking about morality, that's something for another thread. The second bomb I do not think is justified, but that's also for another thread.

So NS, I come to you. Was the first bombing justified or not?

It's either atomic bombing or initiating Operation Downfall.

[Annorax]

Yes. Yes. and Yes it was justified. The bushido code was going to make them fight to the last man. From their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, to the Bataan death march and the rape of Nanking they had to be stopped. Estimates were up to a million men would be killed if a full scale invasion of the main Japanese islands had taken place. The nuke saved lives in the long run. As it was the Japanese still didn't want to surrender after Hiroshima, the only reason they did was because they thought the U.S. had an unlimited supply of of them.

[Europe and Oceania]

Yes. I think both bombs were necessary to end the war. It was justified. After the first one they refused to surrender.

[Sack Jackpot Winners]

No. The Japanese Empire was no more than a year from collapse with the countless firebombs of its cities. Toyko had been reduced to a dusty grid of broken roads crisscrossing patches of rubble, with the occasional building left to remind people that it had once been a full a city. Many other cities had met the same fate.

The bombings were nothing but excuses for Truman to show off his big, bad nukes to the Soviets.

Wow, lots of historical revisionism in this thread. People are aware that Western leaders, for the most part, were eager to foster peaceful relations with the USSR in the immediate wake of WW II, right? The Soviets initiated Cold War tensions with their annexation of all of eastern Europe.

Yeah, it seems people keeping forgetting the attempted coup and near uprising in the Japanese armed forces after the Emperor announced the surrender. That's after two atomic bombs, folks.

That, and they needed to end the war quickly before the Soviets went through their version of Downfall. Which if IIRC it was going be earlier than Downfall because it was less prepared and more to take as much territory as possible, result in a blood fest. Sort of like their Manchurian offensive but much, much worse.

[Grave_n_idle]

Right. Made-up. That's what I said.

Now you're just trying to dismiss a prediction on the basis that it's a prediction.

Noooo, I'm saying that a prediction is JUST a prediction.

I'm also saying that it's not evidence of casualties.

[Grave_n_idle]

I am one of the believers that the first atomic bomb was justified, since if a conventional invasion was used, the war was projected to go on for 2 to 3 more years. I also believe the first bomb being dropped, even though killing many people, saved the lives of over 2 million more. If the war was to go on, the projected cost of human life would be 3 million lives. It ended the war short, and saved lives in the process. I'm not asking about morality, that's something for another thread. The second bomb I do not think is justified, but that's also for another thread.

So NS, I come to you. Was the first bombing justified or not?

It's either atomic bombing or initiating Operation Downfall.

False dichotomy.