Did Truman know Hiroshima was a city?

[grumbler]

I know you're not actually interested in discussion and are merely trying to debate in bad faith about semantics. Doubtless this won't be enough as you will demand a literal quote using the exact words I used despite my making zero claim to be quoting someone. But...

If the best you can do is a quote from someone unconnected to the decision who thinks that "the scientists" were the ones who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima (and who is apparently unaware that Nagasaki was also bombed, kinda making his argument moot), then you have no evidence.

This is  an equivalent of the arguments of "Q" from QAnon.

[Valmy]

Wow. An All-American Football Conference reference.



Anyway it seems to me that Halsey is just spouting his own personal opinion with no insider knowledge.

[Josquius]

Wow. An All-American Football Conference reference.



Anyway it seems to me that Halsey is just spouting his own personal opinion with no insider knowledge.

Note what I said, there's some evidence suggesting this was part of the decision. Not it's absolutely definitely the reason it happened.
I don't have a full list of sources to hand but there is stuff out there.
Another for instance
https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/general-paul-tibbets-%E2%80%93-reflections-hiroshima

Ryan:  General, two things I want to find out about. Why Hiroshima, Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo? I mean you would have shocked the world if you would have wiped out Tokyo. Would it have had more impact?

Tibbets: It may have, but let me answer that question the way the sequence of events occurred. First off, remember, we are working with something that was experimental. The atom bomb was experimental.

Number two, how much damage does that bomb do to different types of manmade materials? Steel, wood, dwellings, factories, you name it. What happened was that in the months before, in other words, as early as April 1945, the Targeting Committee in Washington met at the request of General Groves, and General Arnold in concurrence, to select – let us call them "virgin targets" – targets that would not be struck by the 20th Air Force in their regular bombing. They didn't want a mixture of bomb damage. They wanted to assess damage that the atom bomb did, and not have any impurities wound into it. At that time, there were five cities selected. Unfortunately, I can only recall four of them today: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, and Niigata. Those were the cities that were selected, and General Arnold ordered General [Curtis] LeMay not to strike them under any circumstances until further instructions.

It's unlikely you'd ever get a scientist on record being the moustache twirling villain raz wants. But to me at least it does seem convincing that they were keen to test the bomb in a live fire scenario.
The YouTube link I posted earlier is worth a listen outlining the topic. Also (quite a bit harder to see) the hiroshima museum has quite a lot of original sources that shed light on the decision beyond the simple propeganda reason we are fed.

[Sheilbh]

Agreed

I don't know - I think it enhances our understanding of an event by adding a new possibility/interpretation. It's not about right or wrong, is Truman guilty or not. In this case by looking at documents that have, from my undersanding, been seen as a little unusual and confusing and interpreting them literally.

Proof would be something like a paper that says:

"The war was going to be over soon and we wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb than against the thoroughly hated and dehumanised Japanese, bonus points for being able to spin the bomb as a miracle war winning wonder weapon."

Does such proof exist?  No, of course not.

I'm not sure about what Tyr's saying - but that level of proof isn't helpful in history surely? I mean if you apply that universally you'd probably be able to excuse some of the worst men in history for their knowledge of atrocities committed by their regimes (though not Stalin - he has a very big paper trail).

From that guy's blog - when drawing up the first list the criteria was: "large urban areas of not less than 3 miles in diameter existing in the larger populated areas... between the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagasaki... [and] should have high strategic value." They also were more interested in cities that hadn't already been leveled by fire-bombing. So Tokyo wasn't considered because of how much it had already been bombed.

The argument from the second committee meeting (dominated by scientists and held in Los Alamos) for Kyoto is striking:

From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significant of such a weapon as the gadget. ... Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon.

That goes up to Stimson who makes clear he doesn't want Kyoto bombed:

Then I had in General Arnold and discussed with him the bombing of the B-29's in Japan. I told him of my promise from Lovett that there would be only precision bombing in Japan and that the press yesterday had indicated a bombing of Tokyo which was very far from that. I wanted to know what the facts were. He told me that the Air Force was up against the difficult situation arising out of the fact that Japan, unlike Germany, had not concentrated her industries and that on the contrary they were scattered out and were small and closely connected in site with the houses of their employees; that thus it was practically impossible to destroy the war output of Japan without doing more damage to civilians connected with the output than in Europe. He told me, however, that they were trying to keep it down as far as possible. I told him there was one city that they must not bomb without my permission and that was Kyoto.

And they did definitely want to show the strength of the new weapon - one reason Hiroshima perhaps went to the top of the list is that it had not been targeted by the air force yet so it would really demonstrate the power of this single bomb. But again from Stimson's diary (and it is a reminder of the constraints on a President that even in June 1945 they might run out of time to go through the Secretary of War's agenda!):

I told him I was anxious about this feature of the war for two reasons: first, because I did not want to have the United States get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities; and second, I was a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength. He laughed and said he understood. Owing to the shortness of time I did not get through any further matters on my agenda.

Again it's not about right or wrong - I think that's not a great question. But it's interesting to see what the factors being considered by the targeting committee were and what the different decision makers understood - not least because I do think there is a shift in Truman from being the first President to use this new and innovative weapon, to the last President to use this awesome and terrifying weapon. I think that is really interesting and how that happened for Truman and the other decision makers is striking - everyone says that it's WW2 and cities were destroyed all over. That's true but I don't thnk there's any point when those types of bombing raids are banned by the White House unless they give prior authorisation and making civilian control of those actions very clear. I think that happens because the atom bomb moves from a theoretical weapon to the response of its destruction in practice.

[grumbler]

The idea that the US wanted "to show the strength of the new weapon" isn't controversial - that was the entire purpose behind using it.  The question is whether the US wanted to show that strength to demonstrate to the Japanese that resistance was futile, or whether Tyr's mustache-twirling villain scientists wanted to use it because "the war was going to be over soon and they wouldn't get a better chance at testing the bomb."

Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

[Sheilbh]

Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

I think that's quite a big dispute isn't it? Largely around the impact of the Soviet declaration of war (especially as the USSR was the power the Japanese were using to sound out a peace treaty).

Edit: Obviously - again - regardless of the reality there is no way the US would actually know that.

[The Minsky Moment]

If the best you can do is a quote from someone unconnected to the decision who thinks that "the scientists" were the ones who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima (and who is apparently unaware that Nagasaki was also bombed, kinda making his argument moot), then you have no evidence.

Are you suggesting Halsey might have been a bit of a windbag?
The world wonders.

[Tamas]

The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

[Josquius]

The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

[grumbler]

Also worth noting is that, absent The Bomb, the war was not "going to be over soon."  The Japanese had doubled down on the idea that they could defeat the first US invasion and then get better peace terms (a fact amply documented in Japanese records and first-person accounts and amply ignored by anyone trying to run the whole "evol Americans" routine).

I think that's quite a big dispute isn't it? Largely around the impact of the Soviet declaration of war (especially as the USSR was the power the Japanese were using to sound out a peace treaty).

Edit: Obviously - again - regardless of the reality there is no way the US would actually know that.

I don't think that there is any significant dispute amongst serious historians that the Japanese were going to stake everything on a battle to repulse an invasion.  There is a popular misconception that the Soviet DOW shocked the Japanese, but that's false.  The USSR had denounced the non-aggression treaty the previous April and the question was only when they would attack Japan, not whether they would.  And it is also untrue that the Japanese government thought or even wanted the USSR to mediate a peace; that effort was entirely the individual efforts of specific Japanese diplomats in the USSR and quickly was denounced by both the Soviets and their own Foreign Ministry superiors.

The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

[OttoVonBismarck]

The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

FWIW the atomic bombings likely saved millions of Japanese lives.

[grumbler]

The reveal of the nucular bomb has postponed WW3 by about 70 years and counting. It was a great move.

Though it continues to annoy me to no end when people trot out the nonsense argument that it saved millions of lives in an American invasion of Japan, that it helped to stave off WW2 rolling into WW3 is a far more valid argument.
It definitely seems that there was some belief that this was the case from the American side. Though I really can't remember much about how it looked from the Soviet side and whether continuing to advance was a realistic proposition

It continues to annoy me that people trot out the nonsense that ending the war immediately didn't save millions of lives, Japanese lives in particular.  The argument that using the bomb staved off WW3 is obvious bullshit.   US possession of the bomb would have been revealed at about the time it became operational whether it was used on Japan or not.

By the time the bombs were used, invasion was pretty much off the table; King and Nimitz had turned against it (due to concerns for how many Kamikazes could potentially contest it) and Marshal was wavering.   Arnold had opposed it all along.

Instead, the USN and USAAF had implemented a new operation, rather grimly named Operation Starvation.  It was a high-intensity port mining operation combined with attacks on Japan's coastal minesweeping forces.  Japan was cut off from the outside (hence their relative lack of concern for losing Manchuria and why they had evacuated 80% of the forces from there to deploy against an invasion of Japan). 

Now, the Big Six were not going to surrender when people started to get hungry.  Not even when they started to starve (olds and youngs would be cut off from food first, because able-bodied civilians were already part of the defense forces).  The surrender would only come when literally everyone was either dead, or so incapacitated by starvation as to be militarily useless.  And even if the Big Six surrendered at that point, how many of those incapacitated people would still be alive after the several weeks it would take for the Allies to bring in food?  Japan would suffer genocidal losses, but the moralists today could say "'well, at least the US didn't use the atomic bomb!" and probably think it worth the trade.

[Sheilbh]

The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

I don't know - I understand this is a revisionist take but seems credible and well-reviewed:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022416&content=reviews

I think that there's been a wider shift which has focused more on the USSR's relations with Japan and policy as an Asian power in the 30s and the war. I think there's been an explosion in studies on Soviet-Japanese relations and this might be part of this and I'm not sure how recent it is given that I believe Soviet archive material especially is still dribbling out - but I'm not an expert.

[Grey Fox]

Tyr, why are you stanning for the Japanese lost cause?

[grumbler]

The controversy mostly comes from people who either don't know the facts or know them but don't care.  Even after the first atomic bombing and the Soviet Declaration of war, the Big Six were split 3-3 on surrendering immediately and seeking terms after defeating an invasion.  After the second atomic bomb was dropped and the argument that the US didn't have more than one bomb was laid to rest, the Big Six agreed to seek terms for an immediate surrender (but even then waffled for a few days).

I don't know - I understand this is a revisionist take but seems credible and well-reviewed:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674022416&content=reviews

I think that there's been a wider shift which has focused more on the USSR's relations with Japan and policy as an Asian power in the 30s and the war. I think there's been an explosion in studies on Soviet-Japanese relations and this might be part of this and I'm not sure how recent it is given that I believe Soviet archive material especially is still dribbling out - but I'm not an expert.

Actually, Racing the Enemy is well-reviewed in the sense that it has some valuable primary source access, but not so well-reviewed when it comes to the conclusions about why Japan surrendered when it did.  Hasegawa's claim that the Soviet entry into the war was decisive is based solely on the statement to that effect by the Japanese Ambassador to the Soviet Union (se, for instance, https://middlegroundjournal.com/2013/10/28/review-of-racing-the-enemy-stalin-truman-and-the-surrender-of-japan-by-tsuyoshi-hasegawa-harvard-university-press/)

Hasagawa's claim also faces the challenge of explaining why the Big Six had their turn-around on the day after Nagasaki was bombed, rather than the day after the USSR declared war.  He says that this was because the Japanese were too shocked on the 9th, but that doesn't seem to be ore than rationalization.

Hasagawa also apparently admits that the Emperor mention the a-bomb in his decision to surrender but not the USSR, but apparently makes no attempt to reconcile this evidence with his Hasagawa's own assertions.

I won't even go into Hasagawa's unsupported* assertion that Truman placed the unconditional surrender demand in the Potsdam Declaration because he didn't want Japan to surrender until the a-bomb was used.  That's just too far out there, and ignores the fact that unconditional surrender had been demanded of all the Axis powers in WW2.


*except by Truman's memoir observation that he thought, and told others around him, that "This is the greatest thing in history."