Languish.org

I thought it was universally accepted in the Western world that it was a tough but right decision - but it seems many people disagree.

Generally yes, though I might have waited a few more days before dropping the second.

After destroying other Japanese cities not destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki would leave the US open to accusations of favoritism.

Should've dropped them on the Poland to sever the Red Army's supply lines.

Yes, both at the time and, overwhelmingly, in hindsight.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 11, 2016, 05:22:24 PM
Generally yes, though I might have waited a few more days before dropping the second.

Generally agree, though the counterargument is that every day the war continues is another day of Japanese occupation and captivity for POWs.

Something like 100,000 people died every month in the occupied territories.  We needed to end the war as quickly as possible.  There is of course also the possibility that if the war went any longer the Russians could have gotten a part of japan for themselves.  Having a North Japan and South Japan sounds like a really bad idea.

Killing subhumans is always the right thing to do.

They weren't nuked enough.

It provided the Japanese with the excuse they needed to end the war.  Hard to see why it would be the wrong decision. 

Yes, it was the right decision.  Given that the alternative was continuing the firebombing of Japanese cities (far deadlier than atomic attacks) and using submarines, air attacks and naval bombardment to prevent food and goods from being moved within Japan, followed by a bloody invasion of the Japanese islands.  People who weren't in favour of dropping the bombs generally haven't thought about it realistically.

It was the only decision.

Well we tried to end the war. But the Japanese still probably would have fought on if the Russians had not subsequently destroyed their army in Manchuria. Considering we were firebombing their cities and killing absurd amounts of people every week...well...

WWII was a horrible thing. What can I say?

Quote from: Valmy on May 11, 2016, 08:31:32 PM
Well we tried to end the war. But the Japanese still probably would have fought on if the Russians had not subsequently destroyed their army in Manchuria. Considering we were firebombing their cities and killing absurd amounts of people every week...well...

WWII was a horrible thing. What can I say?

the Japanese high command didn't know about the Soviet invasion of Manchuria when the decision was made to surrender.

Read the book Downfall.  It will end any doubts you might have about the wisdom of dropping the bombs, and has never been seriously challenged as a scholarly work.  Until the bombs were dropped, the Imperial High Command was adamant that they could not surrender until they had met and defeated the first US invasion.  The loss of Manchuria would not have altered that calculus.  However, the atomic bombs demonstrated that all of their bravery and self-sacrifice would be in vain.  Dropping two bombs within a week demonstrated (erroneously, but the Japanese could not know that) that the US had enough atomic bombs to level all of Japan and, more importantly, kill the Emperor no matter how bravely he was defended.  The Japanese High Command surrendered because the were convinced by the atomic bombings that they would never even be give the opportunity to show their last full measure of devotion to their country and emperor - they would just die helplessly in a nuclear fireball.

Fuck, yeah, dropping the bombs was the right decision.   Pretty much every non-leftist Japanese scholar of the war agrees.

Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omerette.

Yes yes yes yes yes.

Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 12:57:53 AM
Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

Meaning otherwise not?

yes. the alternative would have been a far bloodier affair

Yes. What is the reasoning of people here who say no?

IDK about people here but the reasoning for disapproval in general seems to be:
OH MY GOD NUCULAR RADIOACTIVE BOMB!!!!111

Alot of people do not seem to understand hard choices. Doing bad things is bad regardless of what the alternatives are. At least I see that a lot on the internet. The perfect is often the enemy of the good...or the least bad.

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 12:57:53 AM
Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

So the bombings wouldn't be justified to save Japanese and American lives, but they would be to save European lives?  Disconcerting.

Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever.

-Truman, if he channeled GWB

Quote from: Lettow77 on May 12, 2016, 05:34:36 AM
Yes. What is the reasoning of people here who say no?

According to Wiki:

QuoteDwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.[76]

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[77][78] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr. (Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay:


The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, [69]


The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

— Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950, [79]


The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945, [80]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment... It was a mistake to ever drop it... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it...

— Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr., 1964, [80]

Stephen Peter Rosen of Harvard believes that a submarine blockade would have been sufficient to force Japan to surrender.[81]

I personally have no idea

That is the evidence I used to use to believe that the dropping of the bomb was not the right decision. But the studying the Japanese archives seems to prove otherwise.

Still it does not look good that our leaders did not think it was necessary but did it anyway.

 While a submarine blockade would have been sufficient to force Japan to surrender, that could have entailed a worse death toll than the atomic bombs, and one that disproportionately killed women and children.

Although it is true Japan was interested in suing for peace without the bombing, it was not the sort of unconditional surrender America received from dropping the atomic bombs.

Extending the war without the atomic bombs means more conventional bombing and more time for the Russians to get a foot in.  The atomic bombs saved Japanese as well as American lives, if we accept the view that an unconditional surrender was the only way forward.

Of course, a negotiated settlement that let responsible government in Taiwan and Korea may have been preferable, but I've yet to hear anyone else say the atomic bomb was a mistake because Imperial Japan should have been left in place.

Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2016, 09:46:24 AM
Still it does not look good that our leaders did not think it was necessary but did it anyway.

"Our" leaders did think it was necessary, or they wouldn't have done it.  A number of high-level officials, who were unaware of the full details, speculated that it was unnecessary (and in some cases insisted, despite the evidence to the contrary, that it was unnecessary), but no one in possession of the actual facts felt it was unnecessary bar Leahy, and his opposition was based on so absurd a position (that killing women and children was okay before August 6, 1945, but became bad and "not the way" on that date) that I simply cannot attach any significance to it.

The Japanese government had not offered to surrender before this date.  Some Japanese diplomats had suggested mediation of the terms of the end of the war, but they were disowned by the government.  The government was confident that they would defeat the coming US invasion (suffering perhaps a million KIA in the process) and could then negotiate a less-than-unconditional surrender.

Quote from: Tamas on May 12, 2016, 05:49:47 AM
IDK about people here but the reasoning for disapproval in general seems to be:
OH MY GOD NUCULAR RADIOACTIVE BOMB!!!!111

This and I've heard arguments that Japan was "trying to surrender".  I think that debate occurred here a long time ago, I do remember Berkut mocking the idea of "trying to surrender", and rightfully so.  Elements of the Japanese government were putting out peace feelers, but I don't think they spoke for the whole Japanese government (or even the majority), and it wasn't a surrender.

From what I read the Soviets were planning an invasion of Hokkaido, which was not well defended.  The bulk of the Japanese military was defending Kyushu, where the Americans were planning to land.  If Japan capitulated after Operation Olympic it's likely that Hokkaido would be a soviet satellite and Tokyo a divided city.  It's even conceivable that he Soviets would have gotten an even larger chunk of Japan or all of Korea.

I have my own argument as well.  The world needed to see a demonstration of nuclear weapons, on people.  It had to be so hideous and terrible that it left no doubt in people's mind what would happen if there was a third world war.  Before the war, many experts believed that most urban areas would immediately be destroyed by bombers.  Leaders risked it, because it had never been demonstrated.  On the other hand, poison gas had been used on people, and the revulsion resulted it in not being used as a weapon during the Second World War.

Also what people miss I think is that those bombs probably prevented WW3.

Stalin does not seem the kind of guy who would have let some spy reports about a supposed mega-bomb discourage him from his plans.

Quote from: Tamas on May 12, 2016, 10:20:38 AM
Stalin does not seem the kind of guy who would have let some spy reports about a supposed mega-bomb discourage him from his plans.

I dunno, Stalin seemed pretty cautious overall in his foreign affairs. He invaded when there was the opportunity to do so without opposition. He didn't even enter the war with Japan until it was almost over.

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 12, 2016, 10:33:41 AM

Quote from: Tamas on May 12, 2016, 10:20:38 AM
Stalin does not seem the kind of guy who would have let some spy reports about a supposed mega-bomb discourage him from his plans.

I dunno, Stalin seemed pretty cautious overall in his foreign affairs. He invaded when there was the opportunity to do so without opposition. He didn't even enter the war with Japan until it was almost over.

Yeah when he was not being invaded by Nazi Germany he preferred to attack small countries that were not expected to resist much.

Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2016, 10:39:17 AM
Yeah when he was not being invaded by Nazi Germany he preferred to attack small countries that were not expected to resist much.

And he only did that when the big countries were busy.

Quote from: Neil on May 12, 2016, 09:07:24 AM

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 12:57:53 AM
Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

So the bombings wouldn't be justified to save Japanese and American lives, but they would be to save European lives?  Disconcerting.

It's not an easy moral choice.
Even if you could guarantee you are killing a million now to save 10 million later you're still killing a million innocents.

Though the japanese would have been amongst that number too. No race dimension from me. Though there was in American reasoning of the time

I'd say yes. Drawing out the war would have caused more deaths for everyone involved, Japanese included.

I'd also say that the horror of those bombings has been one of the reasons for the fact that no other nuclear bomb has been detonated in anger since then.

Quote from: Gups on May 12, 2016, 09:44:21 AM

Quote from: Lettow77 on May 12, 2016, 05:34:36 AM
Yes. What is the reasoning of people here who say no?

According to Wiki:

QuoteDwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir The White House Years:


In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.[76]

Other U.S. military officers who disagreed with the necessity of the bombings include General of the Army Douglas MacArthur,[77][78] Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials), Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet), Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr. (Commander of the US Third Fleet), and even the man in charge of all strategic air operations against the Japanese home islands, then-Major General Curtis LeMay:


The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

— Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, [69]


The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

— Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, 1950, [79]


The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.

— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945, [80]

The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment... It was a mistake to ever drop it... [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it...

— Fleet Admiral William Halsey, Jr., 1964, [80]

Stephen Peter Rosen of Harvard believes that a submarine blockade would have been sufficient to force Japan to surrender.[81]

I personally have no idea

There are many reasons why you don't let the military make important decisions.

I'm also shocked that high-ranking military men would hesitate to let some gadget get the credit and not their own campaigns.

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 11:02:17 AM
Though the japanese would have been amongst that number too. No race dimension from me. Though there was in American reasoning of the time

So you are arguing that the fact that the bomb was built to use against Germany means that the US was being racist?  How do you then explain the US spending additional money to build a second bomb to use against non-Germans?

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on May 12, 2016, 10:33:41 AM

Quote from: Tamas on May 12, 2016, 10:20:38 AM
Stalin does not seem the kind of guy who would have let some spy reports about a supposed mega-bomb discourage him from his plans.

I dunno, Stalin seemed pretty cautious overall in his foreign affairs. He invaded when there was the opportunity to do so without opposition. He didn't even enter the war with Japan until it was almost over.

He did not believe he could fight the West until 20 years after WWII.  By then, it was impossible to do so because of nuclear weapons.

Quote from: Razgovory on May 12, 2016, 01:31:50 PM
He did not believe he could fight the West until 20 years after WWII.  By then, it was impossible to do so because of nuclear weapons.

Well that and the fact he was dead.

I think that it would be a mistake to view the dropping of the atomic bomb as a purely military decision.  Japan's military had been smashed to the point that they couldn't provide effective resistance in the air or at sea, and I think that Nimitz's statement is made from that viewpoint.  Halsey's statement was years after the fact, and from an officer who was notorious for shooting his mouth off.  LeMay's statement is kind of ambiguous.  It could be taken similarily to Nimitz's, or it could be taken (given LeMay's latter views) to create an equivalency between the atomic bombings and the firebombings that had been ongoing.  Still, in September 1945 it was probably too much to ask for LeMay to be well-informed about the inner workings of Japanese policymaking leading to the surrender. 

Leahy's statement is bizarre, although he was a huge opponent of even attempting to invent an atomic bomb.  Given that, as the President's Chief of Staff and thus the contact point between the Commander-in-Chief and his service chiefs, he was familiar with the devastating toll that US forces were exacting upon the Axis powers with their bombing raids, as well as the submarine campaign and bombardment from surface ships.  The carnage against civilians from the atomic bombings was nothing new, although it's possible that he objected to the efficiency of dropping a single bomb to destroy a city.  That would put him into the rather large category of men who lamented the tide of technology in warfare. 

Quote from: Valmy on May 12, 2016, 01:34:15 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on May 12, 2016, 01:31:50 PM
He did not believe he could fight the West until 20 years after WWII.  By then, it was impossible to do so because of nuclear weapons.

Well that and the fact he was dead.

Edward the First wasn't going to let a mere thing like death prevent him from beating on the Scots; presumably a mummified Stalin could gloriously lead the Soviet Union from beyond the grave as well!

I read LeMay same as Neil - i.e. as saying that old-fashioned firebombing cities into infernos was just as effective.  Also same reading of Halsey, i.e. a big mouth shooting his mouth off without much thought. (we dropped the bomb because Oppenheimer forced the hand of the high command???)

Nimitz/Leahy both seem to be suggesting, without directly stating, that the US could have and should have accepted a conditional peace on the condition of retaining the Emperor, which probably was fairly easily obtainable sans A-Bomb.  That's a pretty sensible point in the sense that the US ended up doing that anyways.  However, it ignores that politically it would have been impossible for Truman to back away from the unconditional surrender demand position, regardless of its wisdom.  My understanding is that Japan was not ready to contemplate that prior to a-bomb strikes.

Politically expedient grudges: because if they can't fit, then dammit, we'll make 'em fit!

QuoteShadow of Nanjing hangs over Hiroshima
Updated: 2016-05-11 15:47
China Daily, Official Non-Official Party Mouthpiece

The White House announced on Tuesday that US President Barack Obama will visit Hiroshima later this month when he visits the country to attend the G7 Summit. It will be the first visit by a sitting US president. However, it would be wrong to interpret this as a message that the US is apologizing for the atomic bomb it dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945, which killed tens of thousands of Japanese.

Hiroshima was the target for the world's first use of a nuclear weapon. A US Army Air Force B-29 called the Enola Gay – the name of the flight commander's mother – dropped the Uranium-235 implosive device. Around 75,000 people were killed immediately and another estimated 125,000 died in the following years from the radiation and other injuries they sustained.

Three days later, the only other use of nuclear weapons against a human-inhabited target so far took place, when another US B-29 bomber carrying a more powerful plutonium device destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

US policymakers led by then president Harry S. Truman approved the attacks as a desperate measure to end World War II without having to launch Operation Olympic, the allied invasion of the home islands of Japan.

Sober US military assessments estimated that the invasion might cost hundreds of thousands Americans dead and millions more Japanese casualties.

The war that Truman wanted to end as rapidly as possible had already cost, by most recent estimates, 80 million lives including at least 27 million Russian dead, 16 million Chinese, overwhelmingly civilians, and the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

But what is always forgotten across the United States and Europe is that the terrible war did not begin with the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939: it began with the Japanese invasion and effort to conquer China in 1937.

In the first nightmarish summer of war in 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army drove west up the Yangtze River Valley, slaughtering everyone in their path.

When they reached the Chinese capital of Nanjing, they carried out the first monstrous atrocity of the war, the Rape of Nanjing, killing at least 300,000 people and the mass rape of untold numbers of Chinese women. The atrocities were so terrible they even shocked card-carrying German members of the Nazi Party who witnessed them.

Ironically, the city of Hiroshima played a fateful role in these awful events. For the Imperial Japanese Army's military headquarters from which the drive up the Yangtze and the subjugation of Nanjing were directed was based in Hiroshima.

In the more than 70 years since those awful events, Hiroshima has become the symbol of the feared new nuclear age. It is, therefore, understandable that the Japanese media are stressing the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. That should be a priority issue at the G7 Summit. That is especially the case since it follows so rapidly after the conclusion of US President Barack Obama's latest Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC.

But as today's government in Tokyo supports the confrontational US maritime policies in the South China Sea, those attending the summit would also do well to recall the reckless, headlong charge into war of the militarist Japanese governments of the 1930s.

For the road to Hiroshima truly began with the atrocities of the drive up the Yangtze eight years earlier.

The author is a national columnist for the Post-Examiner online newspapers in the US and senior fellow of the American University in Moscow. He is the author of Cycles of Change: The Three Great Cycles of American History

The Japanese prefer the term "The date that kinda went of the rails with Nanjing".

Picking up on Joan's point, I think it's also important to keep in mind that the unconditional surrender pledge was made not because the Allies were a bunch of meanies but because it was a way to ensure the alliance didn't fracture.

I think the point about the probable ease of obtaining a conditional surrender with retention of the emperor is largely a leap of faith.  There was no historical pattern of conditional surrendering in Japan.  The Japanese military caste was a suicide cult.

If the administration is saying it won't be an apology, it will probably be an apology of sorts.

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:07:49 PM
If the administration is saying it won't be an apology, it will probably be an apology of sorts.

dertrump has spoken.

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:07:49 PM
If the administration is saying it won't be an apology, it will probably be an apology of sorts.

Why not?  Every previous administration has apologized, by that logic (since none of them apologized, they all issued an apology "of sorts" if your statement is true).

Now, now grumbler...everybody knows that when Obama does it, it's really just a surrender, 71 years late.


(https://s3.amazonaws.com/assets.forward.com/images/cropped/reagan101207-1425816135.jpg)

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 12, 2016, 08:03:28 PM
Picking up on Joan's point, I think it's also important to keep in mind that the unconditional surrender pledge was made not because the Allies were a bunch of meanies but because it was a way to ensure the alliance didn't fracture.

I think the point about the probable ease of obtaining a conditional surrender with retention of the emperor is largely a leap of faith.  There was no historical pattern of conditional surrendering in Japan.  The Japanese military caste was a suicide cult.

These are both excellent points.  The American government couldn't accept a conditional surrender because it was the United Nations that had demanded unconditional surrender.

Plus, the Japanese had made no offer to surrender.  They insisted not on the retention of the emperor, but of the Imperial System (which included an Imperial War Council that allowed the two top Army and the two top Navy officers equal status to the PM).  As I mentioned above, they were not yet ready to negotiate, since they felt that they would be in a stronger position after defeating a US invasion.

I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Hopefully I'm wrong in this case.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2016, 08:16:30 PM
dertrump has spoken.

Don't tempt me.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on May 12, 2016, 06:44:28 PM
Politically expedient grudges: because if they can't fit, then dammit, we'll make 'em fit!

QuoteShadow of Nanjing hangs over Hiroshima
Updated: 2016-05-11 15:47
China Daily, Official Non-Official Party Mouthpiece

(snip)
But as today's government in Tokyo supports the confrontational US maritime policies in the South China Sea, those attending the summit would also do well to recall the reckless, headlong charge into war of the militarist Japanese governments of the 1930s.

The militarist Chinese government would, indeed, be wise to remember that as they pursue their confrontational maritime strategy in the East and South China Seas.  I hadn't really thought about the parallels, but they are indeed interesting.

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:25:43 PM
I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Hopefully I'm wrong in this case.

Eh.  He's a president.  At least he didn't promise "mission accomplished" when he bungled the mission.

Quote from: grumbler on May 12, 2016, 08:30:15 PM
I hadn't really thought about the parallels, but they are indeed interesting.

I've been considering them.  The similarities between modern fascist China and late Imperial Japan are a little uncanny, although Japan faced much sterner opposition then China does today.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 12, 2016, 08:03:28 PM
Picking up on Joan's point, I think it's also important to keep in mind that the unconditional surrender pledge was made not because the Allies were a bunch of meanies but because it was a way to ensure the alliance didn't fracture.

I think the point about the probable ease of obtaining a conditional surrender with retention of the emperor is largely a leap of faith.  There was no historical pattern of conditional surrendering in Japan.  The Japanese military caste was a suicide cult.

In fairness to some of our military leadership, I don't think that they realized just how fanatical some of the Japanese high command was.  It was pretty clear to our professional military men that Japan had been decisively defeated by the summer of 1945, and they probably figured that their Japanese counterparts could see that as well.  And to some extent, I suppose that many of the high-ups in the Japanese military could see that, but on a certain level they simply weren't thinking in a way we would recognize as rational.

Quote from: dps on May 12, 2016, 11:30:51 PM
In fairness to some of our military leadership, I don't think that they realized just how fanatical some of the Japanese high command was.  It was pretty clear to our professional military men that Japan had been decisively defeated by the summer of 1945, and they probably figured that their Japanese counterparts could see that as well.  And to some extent, I suppose that many of the high-ups in the Japanese military could see that, but on a certain level they simply weren't thinking in a way we would recognize as rational.

They had seen garrisons in island after island fight to the bitter end, long after any hope of military victory was extinguished.  Surrenders were something like 15% of casualties.  By any standard that's an insanely low number.  They had seen hopeless banzai charges by the last starving remnants.  They had seen parents jumping off cliffs while holding their children in Saipan and Okinawa. 

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 12, 2016, 08:03:28 PM
There was no historical pattern of conditional surrendering in Japan.

Elaborate.

We can talk about what could have happened, but what did happened not only worked, it deterred future wars.  While there are still wars in the world today, they aren't between great powers, and the frequency of warfare has decline since the Atom bomb has been used.  Pax Atomica has kept the world safe.  I think for that peace to hold people need to be terrified of what a nuclear weapon can do.  The world needed to see the victims.  It needed to see the destruction.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 12, 2016, 11:47:21 PM

Quote from: dps on May 12, 2016, 11:30:51 PM
In fairness to some of our military leadership, I don't think that they realized just how fanatical some of the Japanese high command was.  It was pretty clear to our professional military men that Japan had been decisively defeated by the summer of 1945, and they probably figured that their Japanese counterparts could see that as well.  And to some extent, I suppose that many of the high-ups in the Japanese military could see that, but on a certain level they simply weren't thinking in a way we would recognize as rational.

They had seen garrisons in island after island fight to the bitter end, long after any hope of military victory was extinguished.  Surrenders were something like 15% of casualties.  By any standard that's an insanely low number.  They had seen hopeless banzai charges by the last starving remnants.  They had seen parents jumping off cliffs while holding their children in Saipan and Okinawa. 

Did the higher-ups (Nimitz, etc.) actually see it personally, though?  It's one thing to read about something in a report;  it's quite another to actually see it yourself.  That's why Eisenhower tried to get every possible American soldier in Europe a visit to a concentration camp site--he wanted each of them to see it for themselves.

Quote from: Neil on May 12, 2016, 11:08:00 PM
I've been considering them.  The similarities between modern fascist China and late Imperial Japan are a little uncanny, although Japan faced much sterner opposition then China does today.

What about the masses of citizens daring to buy umbrellas? China is beset!

Quote from: Razgovory on May 13, 2016, 01:42:01 AM
We can talk about what could have happened, but what did happened not only worked, it deterred future wars.  While there are still wars in the world today, they aren't between great powers, and the frequency of warfare has decline since the Atom bomb has been used.  Pax Atomica has kept the world safe.  I think for that peace to hold people need to be terrified of what a nuclear weapon can do.  The world needed to see the victims.  It needed to see the destruction.

For once, I agree with Raz. We are humans, so there will be a day when somebody goes apeshit and burns the world in a nuclear holocaust. But in the meantime we have avoided at least one world war and several regional conflicts between great powers.

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:25:43 PM
I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Hopefully I'm wrong in this case.

You probably shouldn't have let the Republicans condition you like that.

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:25:43 PM
I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Obama's presidency has really killed the free market:

S&P 500 1/20/2009: 805
S&P 500 5/12/2016: 2062

Regular Hugo Chavez that guy.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 13, 2016, 12:42:50 PM

Quote from: derspiess on May 12, 2016, 08:25:43 PM
I'm just conditioned by this president that he's going to start with one false claim and then end up with the opposite.  Like when he says something like "I'm a big believer in the free market system" and then proceed to tell you how terrible the free market system is.

Obama's presidency has really killed the free market:

S&P 500 1/20/2009: 805
S&P 500 5/12/2016: 2062

Regular Hugo Chavez that guy.

:hmm: I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Quote from: Barrister on May 13, 2016, 12:46:47 PM
:hmm: I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Because we were transitioning from Bushitler to Obamahitler?

Quote from: Barrister on May 13, 2016, 12:46:47 PM
:hmm: I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Massive financial crisis that erupted at the end of the previous administration whose core economic and social policy was the "ownership society."

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 11:02:17 AM

Quote from: Neil on May 12, 2016, 09:07:24 AM

Quote from: Tyr on May 12, 2016, 12:57:53 AM
Don't know enough about Soviet thinking of the time to say.
If the fears of them rolling over Berlin and right into WW3/2.5 held true without the bombings then yes. It was justified.

So the bombings wouldn't be justified to save Japanese and American lives, but they would be to save European lives?  Disconcerting.

It's not an easy moral choice.
Even if you could guarantee you are killing a million now to save 10 million later you're still killing a million innocents.

Though the japanese would have been amongst that number too. No race dimension from me. Though there was in American reasoning of the time

Wait, are you actually implying that if, in a war, you are prioritising lives of your own citizens over lives of the enemy citizens, you are being racist?

Quote from: Valmy on May 13, 2016, 12:48:50 PM

Quote from: Barrister on May 13, 2016, 12:46:47 PM
:hmm: I wonder if there is some reason why the S&P was so low in January 2009...

Because we were transitioning from Bushitler to Obamadolf?

Please brush up your classics Valmy.