Atomic Weapons usage in WW2

[Ossric]

i guess the second bomb was dropped so soon after the first because the US tried to keep Stalin out of the East. Stalin & the US had an agreement: if Stalin would declare the war on Japan before it had surrendered, it would get North Korea & the Karilyn islands under it's power sphere. Unfortunately for the US, Stalin declared war on Japan a few days before the second bomb...

 

[Richard III]

Did you even read the thread, Ossric? It had NOTHING TO DO WITH THAT. NOTHING!

READ A LITTLE MORE THAN YOUR MARXIST 1978 TEXT BOOK BEFORE POSTING NEXT TIME!!!!

 

[Hunter]

Originally posted by Richard III
YOUR MARXIST 1978 TEXT BOOK

Well I have enjoyed reading the posts here, but I must admit I am not sure what in your mind that statement means or more to the point what text books, pertaining to the US atomic weapons usage, would constitute "Marxist"?

Was 1978 a more "Marxist" year (Im not trying to mock you I real am interested)?

Is your statement to suggest a different “Russian view of the topic?

Please clarify.

 

[joespaniel]

Oh look, another atomic bombing thread...



In case anyone wants to know the truth, go back and read Richard's and Vry's posts on page #1.

Happened just like they said it did.

Look it up online too.

 

[steviejay]

this thread is not really to find the truth, its a place where people can give their opinions on it. some are for the bomb being dropped, some against, its just a place to share views. if you want to know the history of the bombs, I recommend the Spartacus History website, its as good as they get, in my opinion anyway

 

[Hunter]

Thats exactly it this is not a "Fact" discution, I meen that is a part of it, but it is more of a how do you feel about it discusion.

I think it has been doing that well.

Historys facts can over time be blured, chnged or over time new ones can arise. This is just a thread showing how the facts are viewed today.

 

[HuckFinn]

Now, I will need my titanium underpants after posting this... do entertain the idea and try a reasoned counterargument...

Sometimes I have a tough time grasping the American WW2 logic regarding Japan and in particular its civilian population. I do understand that times were different and perhaps sensibilities too, but still...

The Japanese did what to start it? Sink a few of US navy ships? Yes, a surprise attack, but directed at a clear military target.

After Pearl Harbor, how many American civilians actually died in WW2 because of Japanese action? Any numbers?

And what is the response? Total annihilation, including civilian targets on a massive scale. The reasoning seems to go like "hmm, either we kill 10x Japanese civilians in an invasion of their islands, or we kill x of them in a nuking or two... wonder what would be the ethical course of action..."

What about the option of just saying that "okey, Japan is already unconscious on the ground, it doesn't pose a danger to us anymore"... and then just calling it quits? It does have to be noted that no matter how nasty Japan was towards its Asian conquests, American civilians didn't have much to fear from the enemy... it was the USA that took care of killing the other side's civilians en masse.

In particular if I believed that the nation that attacked mine was led by a warmongering emperor, I would spare the country's people from suffering for his flaws. No need to demand a surrender that is not forthcoming... I would just recognize the fact that the threat is gone and make sure the enemy stays down militarily.

I can appreciate the counterclaim that overall, the Empire of Japan was a Bad Thing, especially for the nearby peoples, and therefore deserved to be taken out... however, I can't really see this having been the actual reason for what happened back then.

 

[steviejay]

"Japan is already unconscious on the ground, it doesn't pose a danger to us anymore and then just calling it quits"

yeah right, if they just went like that :
A) Japan would have rearmed because just simply going back to the status quo wasn't acceptable because they didn't have what they wanted and weren't really getting it and then you've got a war where both sides have nukes because I do believe Japanw as working on a nuclear program, add to that the fact that Hitler was trying to help the Japanese with that as well.
B) If Truman had just called it quits then the American people would have collectively "crushed his nuts", no way would the American public accept anything other than total surrender.

can't remember my numbers but wasn't it something like 3,000 killed at Pearl? sorry for my ignorance at not knowing but I'm pretty tired. civilians deaths are amongst that number and no matter how many you kill, be it 1 or 100,000, you're still going to REALLY annoy that country. It was a matter of honour, Japan attacked before a declaration of war was issued, which, to such a patriotic country as America, is just unforgivable to them and they demanded revenge, which they eventually got. whether it was too much or too little...... well, that varies with each person doesn't it?

also, at that time it was considered good to bomb the civilians in an attempt to weaken their spirit and resolve and hopefully they would then rise up against their rulers, hence saving the attackers the bother of doing it themselves. the Allies tried it with Germany and it didn't work, but at the time people did. There was no mass slaughter of civilians or anything like that by the Americans on the Japanese, at least none that I've ever read. ok people threw themselves off cliffs to escape the Americans but you can't really blame the Americans for Japanese propaganda about what they would do to the Japanese when they landed.

just to go back to the whole "No need to demand a surrender that is not forthcoming... I would just recognize the fact that the threat is gone and make sure the enemy stays down militarily" thing you said. There is NO way I would ever find that acceptable if someone attacked my country. I would DEMAND revenge, but hey, I'm very patriotic.

Thats my post. I'm sorry if I'm talking stupid, I sometimes get carried away and ramble on lol

 

[onejayhawk]

HuckFinn has a point. A small one.

First to cover some areas where he is all wet. Japan did a great deal more than just sink a few ships, although that was enough to tip the balances. Japan had been systematically cutting up and digesting chunks of real estate the size of, well to name a country, Finland for 4-5 years. All of the usual diplomacy and other non violent stuff had been tried and had failed. Sinking the few ships was nothing more, or less, than a punch in the nose after a sting of insults. The positions are clear and the intent obvious. NO ONE, then or now, seeriously questions whether the US was correct in its decision to wage full scale war.

Second, it was a tough fight. The Japanese had a big lead in gearing up the war machine. It took the US almost two full years to really get the materials flowing to the front, and only 1/4 of them went to fight Japan. In the course of the fighting many hundreds of documented cases of Japanese excesses, abuses, and insome cases, outright genocide were encountered. By the time the war was in it's later stages, the fighting had raised tempers to a boil. Asking someone to clinical and rational during a bout of fighting fury is unreasonable.

So here is the point that is worth making. In a perfect world, there would not have needed to be a bomb. Then again, in a perfect world, there would have never been a war. it is possible that the command of the US military did not recognize a beaten opponent when they saw one. It is also possible that the opponent was not really beaten. Regardless, the use of nuclear weapons was a simple extension of the war that existed. In the end it is at worst a moderate excess, and may well have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

J

 

[Speedo]

What about the option of just saying that "okey, Japan is already unconscious on the ground, it doesn't pose a danger to us anymore"... and then just calling it quits?

Japan would not have surrendered without an invasion, nuking, or a however-long-it-would-take blockade to starve off most of their people. Read the above posts, even after both nukes many in the japanese cabinet didn't want to surrender.

So to get them to surrender is going to require a price. Your options are:

Invasion- millions of Japanese dead, hundreds of thousands of Americans/allies dead.
Blockade- Probably millions of Japanese dead, the rest starving.
Nukes- A couple hundred thousand Japanese dead, surrender in a few weeks.

Which do you choose?

 

[Simon Darkshade]

What is also a factor in addition to the choices before (as well as the option of conventional firebombing) is the Allied POWs in Japan and Japanese occupied territories. Their lives and survival were an important factor, and were not going to be survived in order to save a few Japanese lives.

Applying the attitudes and morality of today to WW2 is erroneous. It was a total war in all senses of the word.

 

[Richard III]

And to add to Simon's point, HuckFinn forgets the millions of dead Chinese civilians, and Burmese, and white colonial POWS dead from starvation.

As far as "no matter how nasty the Asians treated the Japanese," is concerned, well, quite frankly, they might not have been human to you, but they were human to me, to the American government, and I might add to the veterans who were fighting alongside my grandfather in Burma at the time. America was just one allied power among dozens with lives on the line. If America nuked Japan to end the war for Chinese and Korean civilians instead of Americans, all the same to me.

It is, for some odd reason, painfully easy for people to forget that over half the Japanese empire was still under occupation in 1945. If the Allies had said, hey, Germany, we've crossed the Rhine, so no big deal, we'll let you keep Norway, half of Poland, Austria, Italy and Denmark, do you think we'd still be laughing about that?

R.III

 

[HuckFinn]

Thanks for the responses, I was expecting that they would go somewhere along those lines.

As I said, I do realize that those were different times, even if I do have trouble excusing the massive terror bombings of civilian targets just because it was the style of the day... just as much as I don't approve of what the Germans were up to against the civilians of the East Front on the basis of "well, at the time the Germans thought it was okey to do that, duh!"

When it comes to liberating Japan's conquests in Asia, it's all fine with me if this was indeed the motivation behind not stopping before you've got total, formal surrender. From a more selfish perspective... if I was only considering the benefit of my own nation in that situation, it would probably be cheaper in overall life and treasure to just bomb their industries, sink their navy and not bother with firebombing/nuking their civilians or invading their islands. Besides, by isolating their islands from the rest of the empire you'd cripple their capacity to harm their conquered territories as well...

I would simply not have bothered. They could have screamed that it's "just a flesh wound" all they'd have wanted... at some point they would have had to accept the facts. I have a hard time believing that the Japanese would have been able or willing to bounce back and mount a counterstrike had they been contained as I suggest.

Would a blockade have starved them? Who knows. Maybe they would have surrendered when things started to look dire enough.

Of course one can make the claim that your patriotism demands the complete surrender... okey, if it does, then I suppose it does. My patriotism does not demand disproportionate measures against civilians in the name of revenge. Steviejay, I would think that the firebombing of Tokyo that killed some 100,000 counts as an example of a "mass slaughter of civilians" that you're not aware of. Then of course there are the nukes...

Now... if the options are either to cause even more casualties (how many more hundreds of thousands?) while waiting for the surrender that might not be forthcoming because of the leadership's stubbornness, or to launch an invasion of the islands that would kill even more people(!), I would really, really prefer to stand down, in particular if I am not that afraid of my enemy anymore. Just call me a coward...

To the Germany example... well, there you at least had solid ground offensives going on both sides that were going to reach Berlin eventually, and you had proper military units to fight against along the way. War against a military is fair game, no complaints there. Of course here too we can start discussing whether for example the bombing of Dresden helped "weaken the German resolve"... it didn't really work with the Brits -- quite the contrary, really -- is there reason to believe it worked with the Germans?

Anyway, moralizing is always too easy in hindsight... I just like to see things the other way around too.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Saying "it didn't work on the Brits" is a false arguements...

1. The tonnage of bombs dropped on Britain was far smaller than the amount Britain countered with.

2. Even that smaller amount of bombing had a major impact on public moral of those directly affected, made homeless or who had lost loved ones. That our leaders didn't then go and convey a defeatist message and that message was killed by a lack of publicity, didn't mean in a number of people it didn't exist.


In Germany where the level of bombing was much greater it caused major hardship for a vast number of Germans and did dent their belief in the War being worthwhile or winnable.

But just because you are taking a beating doesn't mean you are going to be defeatist as the consequences of losing can be perceived as far worse.

 

[Richard III]

Huckfinn, I think it's important to understand that a good deal of the "pro-use-of-the-bomb-in-that-situation" proponents aren't necessarily happy with the situation. I can understand why someone wouldn't have dropped them. It's just that I don't have any trouble understanding why they did, too. It's not that there was no option, it's that it's fair to see dropping them as the best option at the time. By a long shot, in some ways.

R.III

 

[Nixnutz]

Ah yes (sigh)...another one that attributes today's standards to past events.

There are very few on this forum who were alive at the time of WW2...heck, most of us weren't even a glimmer in our daddy's eye at the time. We've all done the reading, but I wonder how many of us have actually talked to our parents and in most cases with this group, grandparents about their experience of that time period.

If you have, you would know that it was a brutal, brutal time and the things that were done were considered necessary and in many cases righteous.

Looking at it today, (what is that worn-out cliche...hindsight is 20/20) it is easy to say the bombs were the wrong thing. However, as is typical with revisionist thinking, the context and perspective of the time is ignored.

 

[Hawkster]

I'm sure I recall reading somewhere that the two bombs dropped were of different types and there was a 'theory' that the second bomb was also dropped - in addition to the probably more relevant points above - to test it's effectiveness compared to the first bomb - wish I could recall where I read this theory. Can anyone confirm /deny this hazy memory I have..

 

[steviejay]

erm............ not sure about the reasoning, it might be right, dunno, but the two bonbs were different. I think one was a Uranium and one was a Plutonium.

NOTE - does anyone know the difference in power between the two? I know Nagasaki was spared some of the devistation because of hills or something but in terms of Kilotonnes, whats the difference?

 

[Speedo]

"Little Boy," the Hiroshima bomb, used uranium and was a gun type weapon- one subcritical mass of uranium was "fired" into and subcritical mass, forcing them into supercritical mass.

"Fat Man" (Nagasaki) used plutonium and was an implosion type bomb- a subcritical sphere of plutonium was inside a hollow sphere of high explosive. The HE blast was focused inward crushing the plutonium to supercritical mass.

I believe the implosion type using plutonium are the ones most common today.

 

[steviejay]

read Tom Clancy's "Sum of All Fears" it talks about nukes alot. Fat Man types of bombs are the type used today....... well not used...... but you know what I mean

what was the tonnage for the two bombs?I can't really remember