1 If anyone thinks there was no need to drop The Bomb on Japan, note that we had to nuke Japan twice before Japan surrendered.  That right there explains why it had to be done in the first place. 

2 The SCOAMT is an effing SCOAMT.

3 ATC, yes. 

4 If SCOAMF wins (steals) four more years, our military will be gutted.  We're already down to pre-WWII levels.

He has a plan.....

5 Relatively inarticulate, --------- Relatively inarticulate? Bullshit. Those guys pack more into a sentence than ten fapping leftists at ACORN planning conference. most have remained silent about what they know. --------- True.

6 1945--oh, you mean back when America was still trying to win wars?

7 The Purple Hearts manufactured for our forces in advance of a continued war with the Japanese did not have to be used after the bombs were dropped. It took the US several decades to deplete that supply.

8
I still remember the street interview with an elderly Korean lady on the 50th anniversary saying the US didn't drop enough of them on Japan.

9 The nukes saved the Japanese as a culture from extinction. Had we had to invade, they would have fought to the last child and in vengence we would have destroyed whatever would have been left. And that wouldn't have been much.

10 John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. ------- Self-aggrandizing JACKASS of the highest order. Listen to or read some of the self-hype trash from this con-job and you will see where the left gets many of it's worn-out talking points. What a putz.

11 My father-in-law was in California waiting to ship over to the Pacific islands when Japan was nuked.  He went to Europe instead and guarded POWs.  I'm glad he survived to marry and knock-up my mother-in-law.

12 I think it's also important to remember that all of this was coming on the heels of the trench warfare experiences of The Great War and the near annihilation of a generation of men.  The completely valid assumption was that the US was facing the same rate of losses as Britain.  As noted above, the US was trying to win the war and dropping the bombs was a far better option then losing all those men. 

13 7 The Purple Hearts manufactured for our forces in advance of a continued war with the Japanese did not have to be used after the bombs were dropped. It took the US several decades to deplete that supply. Posted by: Justamom at August 09, 2012 06:46 PM (Sptt ------------- To the best of my knowledge, they still are. That may be out of date as of '03 or so.

14 To expand, there has not been a war in Europe since 1945 because of the Da Bomb. 65 years! That never happened before in history.

15 In the preplanning for the invasion MacArthur won out over Nimitz when it came to the invasion Kyushu. The 10k + kamikazes that were to be sent to meet the invading fleet were all trained to target troop transport ships instead of capital ships. The Japanese defensive plans almost perfectly predicted the plans that the US was going to use for the landing. It would have been a blood bath and MacArthur would have been forced to resign in shame. My grandfather was being trained to pull a glider for the invasion of Japan when the war ended, without the atomic bomb I probably would not exist.  

16 Yep.  Anyone who says we did not have to drop the bombs is all down with hundreds of thousands of more deaths, mutilations, shattered families, and anguish.  In other words sick nihilistic selfish idiots who want to feel good about their moral superiority even if other people have to die.

And if you really want the peaceniks to have their heads implode.  Just imagine your grandfather or grandmother as one of the 400,000 who died in Galbraith's September.  See if they process the Back to the Future conundrum of them popping out of existence.

The bombs hastened the end of the war.  They saved lives.  In fact more people died during the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

17 Take a guess how many nukes have been set off since Hiroshima?

18 Sweet old fellow in our church fought in the Battle of Okinawa.  He's fit and trim still, with a long, fine scar down the side of his face.

I have a tiny, primitive oil lamp I bought at a Rotary silent auction up north.  The wheelchair bound old Marine who put it up found it way in the back of a cave on Okinawa where he hid for several days before he could safely get back to his unit.  I assured him it would have a place of honor in our home.  He died shortly after.

Hard to picture these old men as teenagers.  What amazing young men they were.

19 The only thing Harry Truman did wrong in those early months was not hanging Henry Dexter White.

20
Like so many liberal totems, the idea that deployment of those nukes was evil is based on a lack of understanding of history.

It's just so easy to say "that was mean."

21 If we had suffered those kinds of casualties starting in the fall of 1945, we would have seen an antiwar movement spring up very quickly. The message would have been "Forget about victory; it's too costly. Let's work towards a negotiated peace settlement instead." Many people today assume that the whole country was united by patriotism during WWII and everybody supported the war effort. But that was only true because we got the war over with fairly quickly. It was only 3 1/2 years from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima. That unity wouldn't have lasted much longer in any case. The Pacific battles of early 1945 were among the bloodiest in the whole war. The American people tend to support wars only when they are short and decisive. There was much antiwar sentiment in the North in 1864, and the presidential election that year centered around it. Lincoln won because he was able to convince voters that it was nearly over.

22 1 If anyone thinks there was no need to drop The Bomb on Japan, note that we had to nuke Japan twice before Japan surrendered. That right there explains why it had to be done in the first place. Posted by: alexthechick - SMOD 2012 at August 09, 2012 06:40 PM (Gk3SS) ---------- Very good point! We're already down to pre-WWII levels. He has a plan..... Posted by: Jane D'oh at August 09, 2012 06:45 PM (UOM4 -------- Ummmm....no. At least not yet. Pre-WWII was ridiculously bad......... Except the Navy. (FDuhR's pet)

23 My wife's grandfather - who is 92 and not native to the U.S. - served in the Navy in WWII.

To this day, he STILL despises the Japanese.  Hates them with the heat of a thousand suns.

24 9 The nukes saved the Japanese as a culture from extinction. Had we had to invade, they would have fought to the last child and in vengence we would have destroyed whatever would have been left. And that wouldn't have been much. Posted by: maddogg at August 09, 2012 06:48 PM (OlN4e) ----------- This.

25 Barry would cheerfully give up every.single.nuke we have.  And just believe his brilliant intellect (lol) and personality (gag) would keep us safe. 

26 John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion.



This is the same clueless butt-plug who thought soviet economy was superior to capitalism.

27
I suppose "touchstones" would have been a better word choice than "totems."

28 I was told on twitter the other day that I was barbaric and that the US used "Al Qaeda tactics" by dropping the bombs.

29

BRING BACK THE BOMB

http://tinyurl.com/yjg4zro

30

"And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else's. "

 

This sums up the position of the critics of the Atomic Bomb, and the nuclear Deterrent of the past 50+ years.

 

They did not have to fight. Even among the later critics, few of them fought, or even served ...

31 My dad was on a ship steaming toward the land invasion of Japan when the bomb was dropped and he was diverted to (of all places) Korea. He wasn't my dad yet, so I probably owe my existence to the bomb.

32 From the US Army, Operation Iceberg.  The invasion of Okinawa.

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/okinawa/chapter1.htm

33 9 The nukes saved the Japanese as a culture from extinction. Had we had to invade, they would have fought to the last child and in vengence we would have destroyed whatever would have been left. And that wouldn't have been much. Yep. We wouldn't have been interested in winning hearts and minds at that point. It would have been a war of extermination.

34 I was rereading Red Storm Rising the other night and there's a bit in there about tactics having to be changed because the Germans who were fighting were adamant to fight to keep every single foot of their land.  That bit always strikes me as being very realistic and very much what would have happened in Japan. 

35 From post by MCQ at Blackfive:

Many of the Air Force's aerial refueling tankers predate human space flight. Training aircraft are twice as old as the students flying them. The F-15 fighter first flew 40 years ago. A-10 ground-attack planes were developed in the Carter years. And all of our B-52 bombers predate the Cuban missile crisis.

Then there's the Navy, which is the smallest it has been since 1916. At 286 combat and combat-support ships, the Navy today is less than half the size it reached during the Reagan administration. And what about those men and women who have been fighting America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001? They're losing 100,000 in active duty personnel. Surely some will go from the front lines to unemployment lines as a result.

36

Ms. Weasel, I check your blog daily. I like your photoshops.

37 My grandfather was waiting to go over to Japan at the time. I'm sitting here today because we dropped those bombs. You're damn right I thank God for the Atom Bomb.

38 Bataan Death March, Nanking, rampant prisoner abuse and murder... As you sow, etc.

39 sifty, you magnificent, barbaric bastard!

40 Two for Japan and one for Moscow. That's my opinion on the matter.

41
We worship thee, oh bomb.

42 The best treatment of this that I have found is Hell to Pay, Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D.M. Giangreco.  If, for example, just one of the blood plasma ships had been sunk, we would have been in deep trouble.  Oh - and the invasion areas would have been subject to about ten atomic bombs prior to the landings.

43 sifty, you da bomb! 

I denounce myself.

44 Secundus, don't forget Unit 731 and the 250,000 civilians killed by the Japanese in revenge for helping the Doolittle Raiders.

45 21 year old 2nd Lt. Fussell commanded infantry in WWII France. Later, he had to sit around waiting to invade Japan and die




Fast forward 70 years.   26 year old college grad wants to sit around on his parents health care plan and get free birth control.

46 Funny we don't have any mutant Ewoks in the Nevada desert with  frickin eye lasers.

47 I acknowledge your self-denunciation and raise you a self-flagellation mydamnself.

48 Um, do you give up now? 

No?

Wrong answer.

49 Let's not forget all the medical experiments and horrific tortures the Japanese inflicted on their captives. The Germans weren't the only maniacs.

50

'And while we're at it, let's go nuke Tibet
Let's vaporize the oceans with glee
Saving the whales an agenda for some
Nuking them sits well with me'

 

 

51 Nuking japan did two important things:

It stopped the asian theater war, and it showed us the horrors of using an atomic bomb.

52 Two for Japan and one for Moscow. That's my opinion on the matter.

Posted by: sifty at August 09, 2012 07:01 PM (p39GY)

Don't forget about us, huh!

53 From the Army history of the battle to take Okinawa, the costs of the invasion.

"The price paid for Okinawa was dear. The final toll of American casualties was the highest experienced in any campaign against the Japanese. Total American battle casualties were 49,151, of which 12,520 were killed or missing and 36,631 wounded. Army losses were 4,582 killed, 93 missing, and 18,ogg wounded; Marine losses, including those of the Tactical Air Force, were 2,938 killed and missing and 13,708 wounded; Navy casualties totaled 4,907 killed and missing and 4,824 wounded. Nonbattle casualties during the campaign amounted to 15,613 for the Army and 10,598 for the Marines. The losses in ships were 36 sunk and 368 damaged, most of them as a result of air action. Losses in the air were 763 planes from 1 April to 1 July."

Just look at the ship casualties.  They exceed the current strength of the US Navy.

54 It was a horrible thing but had to be done nonetheless.  -- Signed by a guy whose Seabee dad slept less than 100 yards from the shed where they assembled the bomb on Tinian while waiting to invade Japan with a bulldozer right behind the Marines in order to clear tank traps.

55 @44 I knew I forgot something.

56 Awesome post.

Airpower was in large part developed because of the horror of the trenches in WWI. The airmen argued that if wars were decided more quickly, the suffering and killing would end sooner, and ultimately save lives.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki proved them correct.

57

21 year old 2nd Lt. Fussell commanded infantry in WWII France. Later, he had to sit around waiting to invade Japan and die


Fast forward 70 years. 26 year old college grad wants to sit around on his parents health care plan and get free birth control.

====

the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off);

====

GHW Bush was on a raft, drifting with the current towards the islands where those beheadings occurred. He was 21 at the time.

58

There are three big things wrong with THE BOMB.

;';'.';/;'.;

 

1. We haven't used it enough.

:":":":":":"

 

2. We won't ever use it enough.

:":":":":":":

 

3. Someone else will use it soon.

59 My dad saw what his own dad dealt with after WWI.  He didn't get to Japan until after the war, but made it to Korea.

60 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

61

Let's not forget all the medical experiments and horrific tortures the Japanese inflicted on their captives. The Germans weren't the only maniacs.

About 1% of the POW held by the Nazis died. Japanese POWs died at about 30%

62 28I was told on twitter the other day that I was barbaric and that the US used "Al Qaeda tactics" by dropping the bombs.

Posted by: sifty at August 09, 2012 06:57 PM (p39GY)

;';';';';';

Barbarism is my preferred method of making war.  Any other behavior during armed conflict leads to more death and destruction over a longer period of time.

63 And because of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese plan of "Kill All" prisoners spluttered to a stop before massacres could occur.

Though on Palau the Japanese did herd prisoners into a bunker and then set it afire.  Immolating the prisoners.

64 My grandfather (marine in south pacific) said the same thing.  Invasion of Japan would have been much worse, not just for us, but also the Japanese population. He also had some great stories... but those are more ONT material.

65 Invading would have also led to a prolonged war and given the Russians time for form their own invading force, which they were planning to do had we invaded. So we very likely would have had a war Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

66

We made a mistake when we called jihadis terrorists. We don't need to be morally superior to the enemy. We just need to obliterate the enemy. And thank those who call us barbaric.

67 Using the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an attempt to force the Japanese to surrender was also one of the greatest bluffs in history. We didn't have enough fissionable material for very many more bombs. The gamble was that the Japs would be awed and shocked into surrender, and it worked. But we simply didn't have the capability to keep dropping them willy-nilly.

68 Justamom @ 7 and 98ZJUSMC @ 13 - We were working off the those stocks until 2000.

Had we invaded, Halsey's promise that "Japanese will be spoken only in Hell" would have been fulfilled.

69 I don't think I'll ever be convinced that we were wrong to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. My father was a Marine waiting on Ulithi to take part in Olympc or Coronet. From a purely selfish point of view, I'm alive because of the use of the atomic bomb. But I'd still be in favor. The proof that both were needed is that even the shock of the first one did not cause the Japanese to surrender. Fussell isn't right about much, but he's dead right on this one.

70 The Japanese also enjoyed using live Marines for bayonette practice.

71 Damn it.  Bayonet.

72 If anyone thinks there was no need to drop The Bomb on Japan, note that we had to nuke Japan twice before Japan surrendered. That right there explains why it had to be done in the first place.

Eisenhower is on record as saying he thought we did not need to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

Was he the Colin Powell of his day?

73 Should have dropped one on the Taliban right after they refused to turn over bin Laden. Just a small one, "a taste of the grape" if you will. Would have saved a lot of lives, time and treasure.

74 damn sock. I blame Bush.

75 Amen. So be it, truly.

76 Trivia Question.

Who was the only man to fly aboard Enola Gay and Bock's Car during both bombings?

77 We just need to obliterate the enemy. And thank those who call us barbaric.Posted by: Meremortal

We don't live in a country willing to do anything remotely close to that in the jihadi area. Look how successful the Left was at tearing down Bush who never came close to such a campaign.

America isn't comfortable fighting wars now. We want to litigate them.

78 America isn't comfortable fighting wars now. We want to litigate them.

Posted by: weft cut-loop at August 09, 2012 07:20 PM (H4Rpo)

';';';';';';';'

 

Americans intellectuals aren't comfortable fighting wars. The rest of us stand ready. This may serve us well soon at the rate things are going.

79 Books on the Allied POW experience in Japan -

Baa Baa Black Sheep by Gregory 'Pappy' Boyington who holds the dubious distinction of having a dishonorable discharge from the AVG and the MEdal of Honor.

Return from the River Kwai by Joan and Clay Blair.

Prisoners of the Japanese by Gavan Daws

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

80 Why am I persecuted by this damnable formatting? I'm out.

81 Oh sure, THAT post you format correctly. sigh...

82 My grandfather fought in Italy and Southern France, a 'D-Day Dodger'. He loathes the Japanese to this day and wishes we nuked more cities and executed their emperor. His feelings towards the Germans have lessened.

83 56 Airpower was in large part developed because of the horror of the trenches in WWI. The airmen argued that if wars were decided more quickly, the suffering and killing would end sooner, and ultimately save lives. Not to go off topic, but I've always been stunned by the number of men who volunteered for the various air services (on both sides) during WWI. They flew in planes that were virtually deathtraps. In most cases, they didn't have parachutes. (The Germans pioneered the use of parachutes as standard equipment for pilots.) If the plane's gas tank was hit, it would burst into flames and the pilot would frequently jump to his death, much like the office workers in the WTC on 9/11. The fact that so many volunteered for this tells you everything you need to know about the ghastly horror of trench warfare in WWI. Anything was better than that.

84 rickl, do you know what was the worst part of being a flyboy in WWI?

The engines of that era on the Allied side at least used castor oil as a lubricant instead of what we call motor oil.  And castor oil is great for making you go to the bathroom and the pilots had this stuff being blown at them as they flew.

85 Jane: When is your Son, the Marine due back from A'stan? I pray that he returns safely and soon.

86 My father came of age in December of 1944 and enlisted immediately, as was the intent of everybody in his peer group. He'd had enough childhood illnesses that he likely could have got out of it. He didn't know how bad one of his eyes was until the physical exam. That only narrowed the range of assignments but didn't keep him out. (One of my mother's older brother had a bad leg and was almost crippled in boot camp before they caught on and sent him home. He managed to get a Coast Guard job to keep his self-respect even though his experience in car repair would have been of significant value on the home front. That is just how young men felt in that time and place.)

So it was off to Ft. Dix and then to Linz, Austria to be a mobile X-ray operator in the occupation. He was pre-Med but being pressganged as a surgical assistant convinced him he wasn't cut out to be a doctor and he got his degree in Economics after the war. The first thing his group were told when getting to Austria was not to get comfortable because a fair portion of the personnel were expected to be sent to the Pacific. As in, we've still got some real war for you kids.

Then the bombs were dropped and everything changed. He got to come home, marry my mother and father five children before dying in 1977. I'm the youngest of those five.

87
GHW Bush was on a raft, drifting with the current towards the islands where those beheadings occurred. He was 21 at the time.

What a wuss.

88 86. the solution was blackberry wine, I believe.  So they were half snockered in the air... I suppose it would help in several ways.

89 #75

That might have been enjoyable but would have had little tactical value. The Taliban were too dispersed to get much value in terms of reducing their numbers or hardware. It could backfire in that we'd used the ultimate weapon and had little meaningful effect.

90 Thank God for the insight of Paul Fussell. What a writer, what a man, what a generation.

91 The only justification I need for the Bomb is December 7, 1941.

92 The bomb was right then, and is the only thing standing between us and being conquered today. Yes our military is great but our manufacturing is non-existent with most technical parts being made by nations more enemy than friend. Logistics win wars and we no longer have the logistical might to win a world war. Our war material is now on the front line with little to back it. Two countries strain our forces in low grade conventional/ high grade gorilla conflict. Financially the US is failed. How do you then finance a world conventional war. It is only the threat of the bomb and quick deployment of that bomb that keeps our smiling enemies from openly confronting the US with their military might.

93 Meremortal @ 75 - Nah, shoulda just turned the whole place into a glass parking lot.  The only products of that region are opium and hatred.

94

My father's situation was almost identical to Fussell's.  He had two brothers and two brothers in law who would, along with him, have been in the assault formations.

Fussell is right about the social cachet of opposing the bomb. It means you weren't a knuckle-dragging grunt.  You had a superior mind.

They make me sick.

95 Another good reason for dropping the bombs was that we've gone almost 70 years without this class of weapons needing to be used in war again. (Although it might have been a good idea in a few cases.)

How many weapons can you say that about?

96 My dad spent his 30th birthday, July 9, 1945: in the Phillipines undergoing amphibious training in anticipation of the invasion of the Japanese mainland. As an infantry sargent he was resigned to what he viewed as his inevitable death.....he never questioned the wisdom of the bombings.

97 > 68 Using the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an attempt to force the Japanese to surrender was also one of the greatest bluffs in history. We didn't have enough fissionable material for very many more bombs. The gamble was that the Japs would be awed and shocked into surrender, and it worked. But we simply didn't have the capability to keep dropping them willy-nilly. Posted by: rickl [/i At the time of Nagasaki, there were no more finished bombs. 1 more was in the process of being assembled. BUT, the plutonium production was coming online fast enough so that they could have made about 1 bomb a week for the rest of 1945. Those would have been used for the invasion in Nov 1945 to secure the beacheads.

98 The 1995 mini series, Hiroshima, is worth watching. Suzuki mocked the generals hair brained scheme to have civilians fight off the invasion.

99

Just to echo others, my Dad was in Army, in the Philipines training for Olympic, the invasion of Japan. He'd already had a brush with death getting Dengue fever, which just about killed him.

 

Who knows if he would have survived to father four children? But like most soldiers and Marines who served in the Pacific, he hated the Japs. He saw plenty of what they had done in the cause of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

 

The Japanese that I have known were for the most part, friendly and industrious people.  But people who think that Japan was ready to roll over and surrender were seriously deluded.  As long as the Emperor called for it, resistance would continue.  It would have been horrifically brutal.  Plus the fact that the Japanese were almost out of food.  The US Navy submarine fleet had sunk most of the Japanese merchant fleet, and there was no food being brought into the country, and in six months the country would have starved to death.

 

Ending the war saved the Japanese culture and society, and millions of lives. 

 

John Kenneth Galbraith was a self -important asshole. A towering  self-important asshole.

100 Conscripted schoolgirls training with Arisaka rifles: http://tinyurl.com/9bh5d3n

Can you imagine being an invading Marine and having to shoot kids that young? What an absolute horror it would have been. Millions of ten year olds zerg-rushing you in the name of their Emperor-God, and nothing you could do but kill them.

101 Fuck yeah! When I was about 6, we were at Santa Monica beach and I saw an oil platform and thought it was a pier coming out from Japan.  I watched WWII stuff on TV with my big brothers so I knew where shit was!

And I asked Johnny, can't Japan come over here and shoot at us? and he said no because we have a GREAT BIG A-BOMB HANGING RIGHT OVER THEIR HEADS!

So we were safe.   God that made me sooo happy!

102 After the bombing of Hiroshima, the Japs basically ignored it as a one-off event. After the bombing of Nagasaki, they STILL considered continuing the fight based on the premise that there was not enough atomic material available on hand to have produced a 3rd bomb. If I recall what I read, I think they were actually right on this point. But with the devastation of these two major cities, the emperor could not risk it. I mentioned the other day one of the best accounts of this was "The Last Train from Hiroshima". Ironically, the author was mired in controversy over one source in his book (even though the account checked out to be a true account). Just makes it that much more appealing to read.

103 My father worked on the bomb. He was often, in later years, asked by lefty disarmament types "if he had any regrets." "Yes," he would always answer. "I regret we did not get the bomb developed in time to drop it on Germany."

104 105, Most of the scientists who worked on it were hoping for exactly that.

105 Jesus Christ is the Atom Bomb.

Thank God.

106 #106: You do not need to tell me; I grew up around a bunch of 'em.

107 Posted by: epobirs at August 09, 2012 07:35 PM (kcfmt)
My dad was in the medical corps in Linz and married my mom, a nurse, in Linz on May 21, 1946. He had been in since Dec 1943 and my mom was in the second wave of WACS. He passed last Sept and never once talked about the war. He did have nightmares until he died.

108

I've already commented on the history of the A-Bombs and the prospect of invasion and the deaths to Amercans and our allies if the war had continued. What I would like to add here are the comments made by my three maternal uncles upon hearing about Hiroshima and Nagisaki. Two were in the Pacific and one was in transit from Europe. They all said they felt such relief, knowing they would live. There was no remorse for dead Japanese. They were the enemy. Better them than us. The reason I bring them up is they were, for all there lives, liberal Democrats.

 

109 Those who condemn the atomic war against Japan because it killed two hundred thousand plus people implicitly advocate the conventional war which would have killed millions.  That makes condemnation of the atom bombings immoral.  While such condemnation poses as pacifism, it is in substance war-mongering.

110 By the way, the US planned to drop nine atom bombs behind the invasion beaches, not seventeen, three behind each beach.  The overall plan was to drop as many as fifty  atom bombs on Japan, if necessary.  The bottle neck was the production of the atomic fuel for the bombs, which trickled out.  When Japan surrendered, the third atom bomb was being transported to the Pacific, having just arrived at Mather AFB, CA.  You can see the bomb casing on display at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, TX.  I believe the third bomb was to be dropped on Kokura, the intended target of the second bomb, which was weathered in, forcing the divert to Nagasaki.

111 My grand-father fought his way across France, the Low Countries, and Germany. And then he got on a ship and sailed to Guam. I'm good with Truman's decision.

112 Thanks for linking this essay.  I read it when it first came out and kept the paper copy for years (until it got lost, or disintegrated.)

And I don't think Fussell was belittling anyone when he referred to them as "inarticulate."   The whole temper of those days was that you just didn't talk about it.   Soldiers, Marines, prisoners of war, concentration-camp survivors ... you read these interviews that were done decades later, people recalling horrific things they'd seen and experienced, and it always came down to we never talked about it.  We just didn't.

When my oldest son was eight or so, he asked my father the "what did you do in the war, Grandpa?" question.  Grandpa wrote weekly letters for the next several months, pretty well covering the years 1942-46, but he always kept it light and even funny. 

BTW, when that essay first came out I mailed him a copy; he approved its sentiments. 

113

What critics of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima & Nagasaki also generally ignore is that the ROE for aerial bombings were quite loose for both sides in WWII.  Sure, there was lip-service to sparing civilian lives but what constituted a legitimate military target under international law allowed a heck of a lot more to be destroyed than what we could get away with today.  Japan spread its military and industrial capabilities into populated areas, which guess what?  Allowed bombing these targets with all the resulting "collateral damage" perfectly permissible under international law.  Look up the firebombings of Tokyo and other Japanese cities using strictly conventional bombs.  Forget "precision bombing" like what we use today, we're talking thousands of "dumb bombs" followed by incendiary bombs targetting military and industrial sites with thousands and thousands of civilian casualties.  All legit under then existing ROE.  The firebombing of Tokyo took more lives than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.  So even if you want to dismiss the potential casualties among military personnel on both sides a general invasion would have brought, as well as Japanese civilians from a ground offensive, what about those civilians lost in a continued and sustained aerial bombing of Japanese cities?  You better believe the firebombings would have continued and intensified, especially if Japanese civilians were being used as combatants against us.  All in all the death toll would have been far greater without the a-bombs than what it was with them. 

114 2 cities in Japan was a fair trade for the kind of street to street, village to village fight we had conquering Germany. How many Germans died in those battles?

115 Great post. I often wonder about WWIII, which will happen at the very least, in the lifetime of the next generation of my family. I hope we are able to win it, but I wonder, when half the country acts like they hate this nation.

116

Apologies - I scroll/read through all the comments, several inspire a response, but I rarely remember who posted what, so .....

 

Purple Hearts.  As discussed here on a thread a few days ago, we still are using the 500,000 struck for Olympic and Coronet (and more were expected to be needed for those operations).  I believe there are still close to 100,000 in stock.

 

Nukes vs. invasion were not either/or - indeed many many nukes were planned to be used in the invasions.  "Preparation" of landing areas or likely centers of Japanese resistance inland therefrom.  So it wasn't a choice - nukes were on the menu either way.

 

Stated in separate comments above but needs emphasis:  the "burn rate" for excess deaths (demographer/diasaster planner's term for deaths caused by human action, in this case conflict and its accompaniments) resulting from Japan's war of insane genocidal aggression was huge, and growing.  400,000 a month is a good number, but probably doesn't include what would have been a sharply increasing number of deaths in Japan from the big killer in any war:  privation and malnutrition leading to weakness leading to death from severe communicable disease or enteric (water-borne) disease.  Japan was on the precipice of a broad public health catastrophe - with absolutely no coping mechanism or mitigation strategy possible - and almost surely would have been in deep national crisis even before the invasions.

 

Which leads to another good point made above, that if the war had continued until the two planned invasions (Nov. '45 and March '46), you'd have had all the misery and death of Japan's Asian occupations and Japan's steady domestic decline, plus deaths from continued strategic bombing (and, increasingly, carrier-based raids) for all those months - capped off by the gigantic devastation and death of the actual invasions.  Doubtful that Japan as a society would have survived - surely nothing like the actual story would have unfolded. 

 

The entire treatment of the two bombs as special is in itself ridiculous and indefensible.  They were just big bombs.  They killed fewer people than 2.5-lb napalm bombs dropped in their millions to cause firestorms in most Japanese urban centers.  There is no "moral" dimension whatsoever to nuclear weapons that doesn't apply to all weapons larger than a personal sidearm.  Pretending or actually thinking there is defines one of the most egregious collapses of critical thinking since WWII.

 

Galbraith.  Idiot - of a very typical and pernicious sort.  Of course there is no basis whatsoever for his absurd assertion about Japan being ready to surrender - it's completely contrary to all logic and known facts (and documents, and interviews with Japanese who mattered, and every other bit of conceivable data).  Don't know about the economist son, but his other son is a vile idiot as well.  One of the real repugnant and despicable morons who have made the Beltway such a stupid, pernicious, and contemptible mess in the last few decades.

 

Darn, Anna Puma, stumped me again.  But another commenter did correctly note that Kokura was the primary for the 2nd mission, but could not he hit due to visibility. 

 

Actually the Bock's Car/2nd bomb mission was a pretty astonishing fuck-up all around - for a mission that had been prepared for and supported as few things aside from manned space shots have been in human history.  Fuel line suffered a blockage after take-off from Tinian - so time/fuel problems for Sweeney to worry about right off the bat.  Then multiple runs on Kokura, but no drop because orders were only for visual bombing on assigned aim point, no use of radar.  So off to Nagasaki.  Oops.  Bad visibility there, too.  Darn, there's an armed atomic bomb in the plane, I'm worried about fuel, I can't take the bomb back to Tinian, I might get in trouble for dropping a bomb whose creation absorbed 10% of the entire GDP of the world's greatest power in the drink, what to do?  Radar bombing, of course (against strict orders).  Missing the aim point, but nicely obliterating the largest Catholoic cathedral in Asia.

 

And even after the similar thread on the 6th, I still haven't looked to see if my memory is correct that the critical meeting of the Emperor with the Big Six (war cabinet) took place the morning of the 9th, as I recall, thus making Nagasaki irrelevant to the surrender decision due purely to timing. 

 

In any case, as noted by someone above, Hiroshima hardly shook the Army's confidence.  I believe one of the two Army generals in the Big Six even reported at the key imperial conference that counter-measures were already being developed, including use of white clothing (thought to protect against burn injuries from the nuclear flash - absurd but there it is).

 

And for those (hopefully not as stupid and arrogant as that slime Galbraith) wondering about the fighting spirit of the Japanese military in late summer 1945, recall the brief coup attempt that was launched against the Imperial Palace when word of the Emperor's surrender decision and recording leaked out.  They held a gun to the NHK station director's head and demanded the copy of the recording, while other mutineers physically invaded the Palace to find the other copy and to arrest Lord Kido, whom the bushido-crazed fanatics had correctly ID'd as the brains behind the surrender effort.

 

 

117

Oh, and Japanese industry was fairly primitive at the time - nothing like the US - and the bulk of work was still done in a shop-system:  workshops, garages, spaces in residences were used for all sorts of work that directly supported final assembly in more modern, centralized factories.  So it wasn't a case of strategic dispersal - it was simply the economic geography and industrial taxonomy of Japan at the time.  So putting the hurt on Japanese manufacturing unavoidably required laying waste to broad urban areas.

 

118

I saw a comment that said it took several decades to deplete the supply of purple hearts minted during the preparation of the invasion of the Japanese islands.

My sources say that the purple hearts minted at that time have yet to be depleted.

119 When I was stationed in Japan in the 1980s, the Japanese workers --who were very well-liked, diligent, sociable and an overall pleasure to work with-- would leave work at lunch time and go outside the base gates on the anniversaries of the bombings. Once outside they'd morph into pure frothing-at-the-mouth anti-American evil. When their lunch time was over, they'd come back on base and everything returned to normal.  It was as though it never happened.  Weird.  Also, in Hiroshima a common greeting to Westerners is to hold up the first two fingers of the hand in what we typically know as a "peace sign."  However, I learned that when a Japanese citizen does it, it doesn't mean what we Westerners think it means.  It's actually the Japanese peoples' way of saying, "We owe you two."  I think you get what it is they're talking about.   

120

I also worked at the Hanford site at the height of decommissioning the reactors there, including B-Reactor, which produced the material for the Trinity tests and the Nagasaki bomb. While there I made friends with the site historian, a wonderful lady.  She told me that it took a train to move the bulk material from B Reactor to the Plutonium/Uranium Extraction facility (PUREX), but there was great worry about spies.  So, whenever the material needed to be moved, the Army would bring in a trainload of horses and secretly drop an empty boxcar at the reactor.  At night, as the B Reactor workers loaded the material into a boxcar at the reactor, they'd let the horses go.  During the day, "cowboys"(actually Army soldiers) would round the horses up and put them in the boxcars.  At night they'd let them go again so they could be "rounded up" again the next day.   They'd repeat this charade every night until the material was fully loaded.  Then they'd hook up the boxcars with the horses and the material, the train would move to the PUREX facility, the "special" boxcar would be dropped off, an empty boxcar would be hooked up, and the trainload of horses would roll off of Hanford.

121 "Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark."

122    121  When I was stationed in Japan in the 1980s, the Japanese workers --who were very well-liked, diligent, sociable and an overall pleasure to work with-- would leave work at lunch time and go outside the base gates on the anniversaries of the bombings. Once outside they'd morph into pure frothing-at-the-mouth anti-American evil. When their lunch time was over, they'd come back on base and everything returned to normal. . . .  Also,in Hiroshima a common greeting to Westerners is to hold up the first two fingers of the hand in what we typically know as a"peace sign." . . .  It's actually the Japanese peoples' way of saying, "We owe you two."  I think you get what it is they're talking about.
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That's an eye-opener for me.  I'd always heard that Japan in general nowadays thought very well of the U.S.  Maybe that's official policy, and the man and woman in the street thinks very differently?

123 @wolfus: In general, they do think well of the U.S., but since WWII there's been an intense dislike for anything nuclear-related.  I remember tha it was always a big issue when a nuke-powered ship came near Japan.  If it was nuke weapon capable, its arrival made all the national headlines. U.S. Ambassador Mansfield worked overtime when that happened.  The Fukushima Daiichi power facility was always a dark omen there; a necessary evil that was viewed as a government-backed slap in the face to the people. No politician could get elected if they came out in support of it, but at the same time, they quietly allowed it.  This fits the cultural norm of saving face and not offending.  With the disaster that happened, I anticipate the national sentiment will be VERY anti-nuke now.