On this date in 1945

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

[marble falls]

1. In hind sight, it was wrong. It opened a Pandora's box problems.

[Demsrule86]

5. We were not the only ones developing this bomb. Actually I shudder to think what vicious

a regime like the Nazis or Russia under Stalin who killed more people in the end than Hitler did would have done with the bomb. At least, we had it first and it could act as a deterrent as it did for many years. I hope it still does.

[Wednesdays]

17. Stalin did have the bomb.

USSR tested its first atomic bomb in 1949. Stalin was around until 1953.

[TexasTowelie]

2. My father was in the Navy at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

I probably wouldn't be here if Truman didn't drop the bomb.

[HAB911]

6. Same here my friend

[William769]

34. Thank the stars you are here.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. I think the A-bomb was inevitable in 1945

Even if Truman had decided to starve Japan and then risk hundreds of thousands of American lives by invading the Japanese home islands in 1945 and 1946, I don’t see Joseph Stalin as passing up a wonder weapon that would make western capitalists and imperialists shake in their boots.

I think that by July 1945 Stalin knew that an A-bomb was feasible and as likely as not continued efforts to build a Soviet bomb regardless. Stalin’s people at Los Alamos and elsewhere had already gotten enough info to go a long way towards building one of their own.

[Demsrule86]

4. I have always wondered about that. But I do believe in the end it probably saved lives...definitely

American lives. My Dad was in Korea. He was too young for WWII. But my Uncle Bob fought all through Europe and was there when they liberated death camps. He was never the same after the war. His wife left him because she viewed him as a murderer (she had joined some strict Christian sects). But I digress. He was on a ship preparing for the invasion of Japan. He told me. They had all heard about Okinawa and the brutality of the Japanese. And the fact that women holding babies had committed suicide in Okinawa.

He said he was just done. He and other soldiers had decided to jump off the ship and kill themselves rather than participate in what would be a bloody invasion on both sides. Before they reached Japan...news about the bombing came. And the war was over. It took two bombs...the Japanese refused to surrender after the first one. But it was over. It is my personal belief an invasion would have cost as many lives as the bombing. In the end, the Japanese would have sued for peace and we would have ended up with a situation like Korea. The Japanese regime was extremely brutal, and I think had to be stopped.

It is hard for me to have much sympathy for the Japanese who began the war with us by bombing Pearl Harbor where several family members were killed, committed atrocities against our soldiers and civilians held prisoner, and were capable of the horror of the rape of Nanking-among other crimes against humanity. My uncle who fought the war always believed dropping the bomb was the right thing to do. I wasn't there so the final word is his as far as I am concerned.

[fightforfreedom]

7. Japan would not surrender, that was the problem.

I read they were arming and training their women to fight. Invading Japan would have been a nightmare.

We had already bombed, burned to the ground cities like Tokyo and they still wouldn't surrender. Their army, navy, air force, had been destroyed and they still wouldn't surrender. They would have fought to last man and woman. I believe it was the right call to drop the bomb.

[Leith]

12. They were training PRE-schoolers to fight

They gave them sharpened bamboo sticks and taught them how to use them to attack Western "ghosts."

Just so you understand, Japanese ghosts are not like Caspar and Sir Nick (from the Harry Potter series). They are like the monsters in The Grudge - horrifying demons.

I lived in Japan for 3 years in the early 1980s. There were still old women there whose bodies were deformed by chronic starvation, bent over in a way that would have given Groucho Marx a backache. I felt bad for them, but the US didn't starve them. The Allies didn't force them to overrun all of eastern Asia with no more thought or consideration for the people who lived there than Don Jr and Eric had for the animals they hunted and killed in Africa. It wasn't the West that forced Japan to commit atrocities. It was the dehumanization of fellow humans that did it.

Japan in the 1930s and 1940s was completely different from what it became after the war. The country was converted into a war machine by their military and they brutalized and starved their own citizens almost as badly as they did to the Philippines, China, Korea, etc. It's terrible that it came to nuking innocents to make them stop, but they refused to stop.

[Hekate]

35. What you say is true, Leith

Thank you

[betsuni]

37. Stories of Japanese child survivors of the Battle of Okinawa are tragic, how many children blew

themselves up with grenades, people jumped off cliffs because they were terrified of what the Americans would do to them, were brainwashed with propaganda. Were shocked when Americans gave them medical treatment, fed them and weren't monsters after all. While the Japanese military retreated. A mainland invasion would've been the same thing.

My Japanese husband went on a rant about how the military expected soldiers to march without eating, no medicine for malaria. When they couldn't keep going, dump them to die. The Japanese fighting spirit, your own fault if you don't have enough to survive. While military elites partied. Women and children whose husbands and fathers didn't come back from the war were on their own and nobody cared. It was insane.

By father-in-law's generation (he was almost sixteen when the war ended and itching to join the military) were convinced the war was started by the U.S. because of trade boycotts. Why he refused to meet me until years after I married his son. Oops, my bad for starting that war.

[lastlib]

8. The Big Bang

Rush:

took and shook the world, shot down the rising sun.

[Stuart G]

9. Yes, America Did the Right Thing. Japan Attacked Pearl Harbor. Started a World War..

We dropped the Atomic Bomb and ...."Ended A War"

An invasion would have killed far more of them & us.

[hunter]

10. The U.S.A. was never going to invade the Japanese homeland.

It's just a lie we tell ourselves to make us feel better.

The "invasion" was arranged to keep up appearances and hopefully pressure the Japanese to surrender sooner, rather than later. The Bomb was still secret.

The plutonium production reactor at Hanford was built big. Construction began in March 1943. By then the U.S.A. was convinced atomic bombs could be built. From then on the bomb was inevitable. With the success of the Trinity test on July 16, 1945, the path became clear. The U.S.A. would continue to drop atomic bombs on Japan until they surrendered or there was nothing left of them. The fate of Germany would have been similar had they not surrendered on May 8, 1945.

By 1950 the U.S.A. had built more than 100 "Fat Man" type plutonium bombs of the type that incinerated Nagasaki, and these were already being replaced by new and improved designs. Most of these bombs used plutonium produced before the temporary postwar shutdown of the Hanford plutonium production lines for necessary safety and efficiency improvements.

The shameful secret of the Nagasaki bombing is that many who supported it saw this as a golden opportunity to see what their new bombs would do to a living city. Stalin took that as a clear message. Most U.S. Americans simply wanted the war to be over.

[CTyankee]

11. This will always be debated but I have to admit that we did not value Japanese lives above non-Asian

lives. Would we have used the Bomb on Germans?

[hunter]

14. It does make one wonder...

In some alternate universe where Germany was still fighting would we have bombed Japan first anyways?

[Javaman]

18. There was a plan to bomb Hamburg

If the war dragged in that long. Hamburg was a completely devastated city from allied bombing and it was to be a “test” city to show the power of the bomb.

[Hekate]

40. Very likely we would have. Nazi Germany was hard at work on its own nuclear project. nt

[Javaman]

16. Read up on operation downfall before you make statements like that

It was in mid planning stage and was roughly scheduled in mid ‘46.

And there would have been atomic bombs used the invasion

I have read extensively in this topic

[hunter]

23. It's all hypothetical.

The Japanese had reasons for fighting, just as we had reasons for fighting.

As Inigo Montoya might say, ""You keep using that word reasons. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The war planners really didn't know what they had, even after Nagasaki. That's how my father-in-law got to witness an atomic bomb test up close. Our military wanted to know how our soldiers would react to actual atomic bombs on the battlefield so they selected some "volunteers" to serve as guinea pigs.

I was raised as some sort of Christian Pacifist with a capital "P" so maybe I resist reading war history as drama.

Elaborate war plans can evaporate in an instant.

[Javaman]

31. It's documented that the dept of war ( at the time)

Requested 3 additional atom bombs for the invasion. One to be used at each beach head. This was beyond the theory stage. And additional bombs if needed in the later stages of the invasion

You like to talk a lot but it is clear you have read anything reading regarding down fall.

So I think we are done here.

Have a good one and do some reading

[hunter]

32. I'm well read on this subject. I simply have a different take on history.

"Revisionist," you might say... as all historical accounts are, the moment any historian begins to write.

The questions asked in the original post's video are not illuminating or productive in my not-so-humble and likes-to-talk opinion. I ask different questions.

The historical consensus, especially the popular consensus, developed after-the-fact in the U.S.A., was that the bomb "saved lives." That's the perspective of this video with its fancy animated pie charts and dramatic music.

But the motivations of the individuals and institutions involved in the construction, deployment, and the use of these bombs weren't so simple as that.

It's an intense subject.

We built the capacity to make many bombs, we dropped two bombs on Japan, Japan surrendered. That's the historical truth.

The "Cold War" (which wasn't so cold) had already started before World War II ended.

[BannonsLiver]

13. Ah time for DU's 22nd annual debate over the events of August 1945

[hunter]

20. There are interesting ethical questions here...

... and some insights into how we view ourselves as a nation.

Otherwise I tend to look at human history the same way I look at evolutionary biology. Stories are teleology. Stuff happens. People tell stories about the stuff that happened.

The giraffe has a long neck. People tell stories about how the giraffe got a long neck. These stories tell us more about the story teller than they do about the giraffe's long neck.

[BannonsLiver]

30. Of course and those discussions are worthwhile.

Revisionist nonsense not so much.

[Hekate]

36. Yep. Last year somebody claimed that the US govt suppressed evidence of the results...

On the contrary — still photos, documentaries, and books were all over the place in my post-WWII childhood. A lot of sci-fi in the ‘50s and ‘60s was heavily post-apocalyptic nuclear war.

Anyone alive now could dig up all of that information very easily.

[BannonsLiver]

43. It must be a different revisionist obsession du jour every year.

[Hekate]

44. That's quite possible, altho some of the same people show up every year with the same rant...

…that whitewashes Japan’s actual conduct in the Greater East Asia War and paints the US as the blackest villain in history for the way we made their rulers finally surrender.

They know better than to whitewash Germany’s behavior in WWII on this board — Jewish Americans have made quite sure that piece of history will not be forgotten by anyone sane.

But I think it is our reflexive orientation toward Europe and widespread ignorance of all things Asian that has allowed otherwise intelligent people to not acknowledge the evil that seized Japan and made them Hitler’s ally. The Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March were only two of the most notorious horrors.

The US helped a devastated Japan rebuild and to write a meaningful Constitution, and Japan became an economic powerhouse and a strong US ally. As Professor Akita said to my Japanese History class back in 1968, everything they tried to accomplish by war, they instead gained by peace.

But Dr. Akita, a Nisei himself, teaching at University of Hawai’i, never whitewashed history.

[Hekate]

45. Sorry, duplicate

[Javaman]

15. We would have used them again and and if needed

In the planning for operation downfall aka invasion of Japan, an atomic bomb was to be used at each landing point prior to sending troops

[harumph]

19. I had relatives serving in the war in the Pacific.

The bombs ended the war decisively. It it unfortunate, and yes sad. However Japan initially
attacked the US and at the time the bomb was dropped we were looking at a prolongation of the war which
would have cost American lives. You go tell the widows that you could have stopped her husband from
being killed - but ya know, the A-bomb is too nasty to use. Of course, there was a power imbalance that
can't be ignored. One thing about dropping those bombs is it has made dropping more unthinkable.

Hey what if Wat Tyler had managed to lop Richard II head off? I think about that sometimes. The timeline is
a bitch isn't it?

[Calculating]

21. Japan did lots of horrible things in the war

Bataan, unit731, pearl harbor, rape of Nanking etc. I'd say it was "fair" if not morally right.

[The Magistrate]

42. Let Us Be Clear About What 'Blockade' Is In This Context, Sir

It is systematic starvation.

The idea this was somehow a humane alternative to the use of nuclear weapons is risible.

For that matter, the nuclear weapons were barely a footnote to the campaign of murderous incendiarism conducted by Gen. LeMay, begun with the burning to death of at least a hundred thousands one March night in Tokyo.

[sarisataka]

27. If history went down that path

I have no doubt thar the people of 2022 would be debating why didn't we use the bomb to end the war quickly.

Instead we used a blockade to cruelly starve millions to death over the course of a year or more. The use of one or two bombs may have killed thousands but the war would have ended in a matter of weeks once we demonstrated what we could do to the cities of Japan.

[sarisataka]

47. In the long run it may have been good

For the world to get a peek at that genie.

If we did not have the graphic images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would A-bombs been used in Korea or Vietnam on a wide scale? Would the USSR used them in Afghanistan or elsewhere?

[Silent3]

22. I'd be curious what a consensus of modern Japanese historians think about this

Do many (or any) of them share the now-common American view that, without the use of the atomic bombs, Japan would have kept the war going, fighting bitterly until there were far more casualties on both sides?

[Hekate]

38. My understanding is that their version of the Greater East Asia War differs from our version of...

….World War II, in that their historians leave out a lot of the atrocities committed by Japan.

As a result, the average person gets pretty offended at mention of Korean Comfort Women and so forth, because they have not been taught much about the wartime atrocities committed by their country.

I don’t know what higher-level researchers know and study in the academic world, just that Japan wanted to forget.

As for what Americans believe or don’t, I’m of the opinion that there’s a lot Americans are ignorant of. Whatever our country did wrong, at least it was not as a result of official US policy that encouraged torture — as was the case with the members of the Axis. In California I grew up knowing neighbors who were survivors of the Holocaust in Europe, and while a youngster in Hawai’i I met a woman who had survived a Japanese concentration camp in the Philippines.

As for our then-allies the Russians — I think we are learning from the Ukrainians of 2022 why it was that women from Poland to Germany prayed like hell that it wouldn’t be the Russian Army that overran their countries at the end of WWII.

[betsuni]

39. +1

[MineralMan]

29. 8 days after I was born.

[William769]

33. They were the ones who decided to wake the sleeping giant, and they did it in a cowardly way.

[anamnua]

41. The snag is

that the Japanese, albeit while on a faster different moral plane, were on the same wavelength as the British in 1940: we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...