The Decicison (Atomic bomb in Japan WWII) [Archive]

View Full Version : The Decicison (Atomic bomb in Japan WWII)

Sosa

16th March 2011, 15:59

Imposter Marxist

16th March 2011, 16:24

Rjevan

16th March 2011, 16:38

Moved to History.

There a quite a few old threads on this topic, maybe they can help you a bit:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-t128884/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/atomic-bomb-droping-t59119/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/did-japan-try-t50735/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/hiroshima-nagasaki-t34563/index.html

http://www.revleft.com/vb/dropping-atomic-bombs-t5063/index.html

Fulanito de Tal

16th March 2011, 18:20

In my opnion, the bomb was used NOT to save human lives (As I've heard Japan was in talks with the US and USSR for surrender, and the Japanese History books say that the USSR's invasion of an island I can't remember) But was instead used to intimidate the world, and most importantly the USSR. Howard Zinn I think wrote something about this before he died.

I saw a documentary that said they same thing. In the documentary, they said that Truman told Stalin that he had a weapon capable of extreme destruction and Stalin just smiled. Anyway, the movie goes over how the war with Japan was already won. The US fabricated a situation in which to have a reason to dropped the bomb...something about Japan had to surrender and give lots of control to the US or similar. Japan didn't agree to the terms, so the US dropped the bombs. There was also a something going on with the Soviet Union closing in on Japan and the US wanted to take over Japan first so it would have strategic points close to the Soviet Union.

I think I the documentary at home. If I don't give you the name by tomorrow, send me a message.

ComradeOm

16th March 2011, 19:20

Invader Zim

17th March 2011, 16:34

You may want to check out Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. Particularly interesting is the assertion that it was not the bombs themselves that caused Japan to surrender but rather the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. This ended any Japanese hopes of a negotiated settlement via Moscow

You mean the unconditional surrender that the Allies had agreed upon at Casablanca in 1943? Hardly a "fabrication" thought up on the spot :glare:

I don't think there is very much in any aspect of the historiography of the topic which would argue that the it was the use of the bombs which caused the Japanese surrender. Even the more orthadox accounts often suggest that the bombs dictated only the timing, but that Japan would amost certainly have surrendered prior to an all out invasion of Japan's two major Islands. The notion that the bombs were an absolute necessity doesn't seem to make a major appearance in any of the material I have read.

An interesting, and freely available, peer-reviewed article on that subject:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/is3104_pp162-179_wilson.pdf

On the subject of Japanese peace fealers via the USSR; the big six in the Japanese government were split and endured a major deadlock by the summer of 1945. Both factions were convinced of the need to end the war, and both wanted to achieve a favourable peace for Japan. By favourable, the primary desire was that the existing political system would be retained, i.e. the position of the Emperor could not be jepodised. However the two factions differed on the means of achieving this peace. On the one hand there was the faction which wished to employ a military solution to the problem. This faction wished to fight the US until so many casualties and resources had been expended that the US was willing to give Japanese leaders what they wanted from the peace. The other faction wished to use diplomatic channels, via the USSR, to negotiate a surrender with the relevent provisions.

This latter group began the process by ordering the Japanese diplomat in the USSR begin sounding out the then neutral Soviet leadership whether they would be willing to act as a peace broker between Japan and the rest of the Allies. The various messages sent between Tokyo and her ambassador were intercepted, and decrypted, by Allied intelligence and as a result the US knew full well that the peace faction was making moves in that direction and that Tokyo was looking for a way out. You can read an intelligence report emerging from those decrypts:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/29.pdf)

But regardless of these moves, the japanese big six were still in a stalemate, neither side being able to budge the other until after two events. Firstly the use of the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the second being the Soviet declaration of war against Japan and the invasion of Japanese controlled Manchuria, the Kuril islands and the souther half of the island of Sakhalin.

It is at this stage where the debate arguably becomes most important. On the one hand those who believe the use of the bombs was justified suggest that the impact on Japanese moral was enormous, both on a social and cultural level, but also on a political level. These people believe that the bombs shocked Japan into its surrender. Another point of view, incidentally the same argument made in the article I posted by Ward Wilson, is that the Soviet entry into the war was the cause of the surrender. This position revolves around the fact that the invasion rendered both Japanese stratagies, to have a negotiated surrender, moot. Turning the coming invasion into a multi-front war rendered the military solution a doomed enterprise, and the Soviet decision to enter the was and cease being aneutral power ended the diplomatic solution.

Perhaps a more nuanced position than either of these is that the timing of the surrender depended on both these duel shocks, this is the position of Sadao Asada, though Asada suggests that the bombs shared the greater weight of those two shocks.

One of the other regularly touted arguments is that without the bombs the Japanese would never have surrendered, and that it would have been necessary to invade the home Japanese islands, at a great human cost of allied soldiers and japanese civillians. This argument holds very little weight in my opinion. Few historians, even those who suggest that given the information available to Truman the use of the bombs was justifiable, suggest that this was actually the case.

J. Samuel Walker argued that the bombs dictated the timing of the Japanese surrender, and probably saved US military lives, but when addressing the question of whether the bombs were necessary to end the war without invasion, he wrote:

"[N]o, the bomb was probably not necessary to end the war within a fairly short time without an invasion of Japan. And no, the bomb was not necessary to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American troops'".

Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic
Bombs against Japan (London, 1997), p. 97.

Even Feis, the orthadox historian who argued that the use of the bombs was justified, dispelled the idea that the bombs were necessary to prevent a Japanese invasion:

"There cannot be a well-grounded dissent from the conclusion reached as early as 1945 by members of the US Stratigic Bombing Survey. After inspection of the condition to which Japan was reduced, by studies of the military position and the trend of Japanese popular and offical opinion, they estimated "... that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

Feis, The Atomic Bomb & the End of World War II (Princeton, 1966), p. 191.

So to conclude my post, which I hope has been helpful, in my opinion I think that the US demand for an unconditional surrender at Potsdam effectively made the use of the bombs inevitable. There were voices within the US government which outlined to both FDR and Truman the realities of the Japanese high-command position, namely that they could not support a peace which did not maintain the position of the Emperor. It is also worth noting that the US actually backed down on the 'unconditional' aspect of the surrender after using the bombs, when it accepted the Japanese surrender which demanded that the Emperor retain his position. Yet they made this demand anyway and thus made a diplomatic solution impossible. so it is my argument that both the use of the bombs as well as an invasion could have been averted, and the war ended far earlier, had the two US administrations been willing to accept in the spring/summer of 1945 what they eventually accepted in August 1945.

Secondly, the jury is still out as to whether it was the bombs, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria or a combination of the two which triggered the eventual Japanese surrender, though it must be emphasised that neither actually caused the surrender.

Thirdly, the Japanese had long wanted to end the war, but the supreme council could not agree how to do so.

Forthly, whatever rubbish you read: no, the US would not have needed to invade the Japanese home Islands to end the war.

Finally, there is an argument, espouced primarily by Gar Alperovitz, in his seminal work, Atomic Diplomacy, in which it was argued that the use of the weapons had little to do with forcing a japanese surrender, but was actually one of the opening moves of a second Cold War, and that it was all an aggressive message to the Soviet Union. Though it would not come as a shock if this were true given US position from 1945-55 when the US anti-communist policies solidified, it is my belief that the jury is still out on that as well. But ultimately in my view the surrender of japan could have been achieved through diplomatic channels, had the US seriously entertained the notion. But that said, I'm not an expert.

Omsk

17th March 2011, 16:46

More than 60 of its cities had been destroyed by conventional bombing, the home islands were being blockaded by the American Navy, and the Soviet Union entered the war by attacking Japanese troops in Manchuria.

The US refused the terms of their assigned "unconditional surrender" demand to allow the Japanese to keep their emperor and that prolonged the Japanese resistance.(no need)

They could have just bombed a isolated place,without people in the vacinity to show the emperor the power of the A-bomb,no need to kill a whole city of civilians.

Why the hell did they bomb Nagasaki right after Hiroshima?

They used the bomb to try to frighten the brave comrades of the Red Army and comrade Stalin,which resulted in a failure,since the Soviet's got their bomb in no-time. (not much of a fright)

Civilians outnumbered the soldiers 6:1,strategic importance = 0

+The Soviet Union entered the war.

In February 1945, the leaders of the U.S., Great Britain, and the Soviet Union attended the Yalta Conference. Based on a request by the U.S., they agreed, in utmost secrecy, that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's surrender. Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. At that time, Japan was in extremely weak condition. Japan began negotiating for peace through the Soviet Union, with which it had signed a neutrality pact, hoping to end the war under terms somewhat more favorable to Japan.

The A-bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was an act of savagery and it was monstrous.

Red Commissar

17th March 2011, 17:39

I have to write a 2 page paper on US President Truman's decision to drop the atomic bomb over Japan and I was wondering if any of you could help me bring a leftist perspective to this topic. Where should I start? Any resources I can check out?

There was a documentary made awhile ago featuring Robert MacNamara (Secretary of Defense under LBJ during Vietnam), where they asked him about the event due to his involvement with it. It's an interesting watch for information:

pmJDj-oLYyM

It shows what the US was already doing before the nuclear bomb was even dropped. Japan was wrecked as it is, so the dropping of the bomb had another purpose which users have said.

Beyond that everyone else has said what I wanted to.

Sosa

17th March 2011, 18:47

Thanks everyone, looks like I have more than enough to put something together. :thumbup1:

Fulanito de Tal

17th March 2011, 23:42

More than 60 of its cities had been destroyed by conventional bombing, the home islands were being blockaded by the American Navy, and the Soviet Union entered the war by attacking Japanese troops in Manchuria.

The US refused the terms of their assigned "unconditional surrender" demand to allow the Japanese to keep their emperor and that prolonged the Japanese resistance.(no need)

They could have just bombed a isolated place,without people in the vacinity to show the emperor the power of the A-bomb,no need to kill a whole city of civilians.

Why the hell did they bomb Nagasaki right after Hiroshima?

They used the bomb to try to frighten the brave comrades of the Red Army and comrade Stalin,which resulted in a failure,since the Soviet's got their bomb in no-time. (not much of a fright)

Civilians outnumbered the soldiers 6:1,strategic importance = 0

+The Soviet Union entered the war.

The A-bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was an act of savagery and it was monstrous.

Also, Nagasaki was not the original target; it was the backup. The original target was Kokura, but it was too cloudy over there to drop the bomb (http://www.mphpa.org/classic/HISTORY/H-07m1.htm).