[YouTube]Why Bombing Hiroshima Was Unjustified | U.S. vs. Japan in World War II

[saspatz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB3D8dkVFAU

When I was in 5th Grade we studied WWII and were asked to debate various topics regarding events surrounding this. I chose to debate whether the second bomb constituted a war crime.

First I defined a war crime according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. . http://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm 

I highlighted Article 8 War Crimes Paragraph 2: For the purpose of this statute, "war crime" means: b.) other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, namely, ant of the following acts: section (iv)     Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

​I argued that even if the first bomb were justified by the arguments put forth in our history text, these arguments did not hold for the second bomb because not enough time was allowed for the Japanese to surrender.

My opponents argument was America has never committed a war crime. He provided neither evidence nor rational for his argument. It took less than a minute. After our debate, the class was asked to vote on the debate. I lost the debate according to the class. My instructor gave my opponent a B for the debate and gave me an F.

But the public education system doesn't have an agenda.   

 

[twinklingwinter]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB3D8dkVFAU

When I was in 5th Grade we studied WWII and were asked to debate various topics regarding events surrounding this. I chose to debate whether the second bomb constituted a war crime.

First I defined a war crime according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. . http://legal.un.org/icc/statute/99_corr/cstatute.htm

I highlighted Article 8 War Crimes Paragraph 2: For the purpose of this statute, "war crime" means: b.) other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, namely, ant of the following acts: section (iv)     Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated;

​I argued that even if the first bomb were justified by the arguments put forth in our history text, these arguments did not hold for the second bomb because not enough time was allowed for the Japanese to surrender.

My opponents argument was America has never committed a war crime. He provided neither evidence nor rational for his argument. It took less than a minute. After our debate, the class was asked to vote on the debate. I lost the debate according to the class. My instructor gave my opponent a B for the debate and gave me an F.

But the public education system doesn't have an agenda.   

 

That would explain the staggering amount of non-arguments in the comments.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

But Russia Russia Russia!

 

Seriously, though, the more and more I contemplate the nuclear arms question, the more and more I realize what a insanely complicated issue it is.

 

Dan Carlin at Hardcore History Podcast just released a 5-hour podcast called The Destroyer of Worlds on this very topic. I'm almost all the way through it and it is absolutely top-notch. I recommend it fully:

 

http://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-worlds/

[Laforge]

5:50 "Either Japan had to be crippled by no-oil or they had to strike.
But certainly America had forced their hand in this way"

Sounds like the USA only ostracized Japan, violence not justified. That being said,
I would ofcourse agree that breaking the arm of a guy you don't like and in response he kills your entire home town is the worst dick-move ever and morally unjustified. (analogies: you = Japan, he = USA, breaking arm = killing some "disposable males" at Pearl Harbor)

Now I wonder exactly at what point you should stop using violence against someone who used violence against you. Does doing max 150% of the damage back make the remainer morally unjustified? Or would pure ostracism/defense have worked? Tricky stuff!
 

[M.2]

I believe this summarises the arguments put forward by Mr.Molyneux. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_weber.html

 

In researching this topic for myself, I have found many conflicting data and sources. However, there are some things everyone agrees on:

1. Japan was losing

2. The japanese government was not in agreement over the issue of surrender.

3. The japanese pled for a conditional surrender before the bombs. (contents are not agreed upon) The plea was rejected nevertheless.

4. 2 Bombs were dropped. Motives are not agreed upon.

3. It was Emperor Hirohito who gave the final Word to surrender unconditionally. He personally broadcasted via radio to his troops and citizens.

 

My argument:

Asia! We are talking about a country in Asia. The conventional rules of war do not apply in Asia. The personal opinions of Eisenhower and others do not matter, since they did not know the mentality of the japanese people. We have as example the case of China: When Japan invaded China, they had seized all means of production, all major cities. There was no China anymore. And yet, somehow, the war was still on with the chinese.

With the japanese being even more stubborn that the chinese, I would argue that the japanese people would have continued to fight if the Emperor had not ordered his people to stand down.

And no, the Emperor was not the dictator of Japan, he was the god of the japanese people, and even the amiracans knew that the Emperor cannot be removed. You cannot remove a god. The one in charge of the war was Hideki-Tojo, the prime minister, who was fired by the Emperor shortly before the end.

According to the Emperor himself, it was the bombs that persuaded him to take the Wheel and surrender.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm

 http://www.taiwandocuments.org/receipt.htm

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hirohito

 

Remaining Question: Was the USA justified in seeking unconditional surrender from the Japan? Was the USSR right in rejecting a conditional surrender from Germany? We do not know. Everyone who claims to know is just speculating. The Emperor's Word ended the war, and that's that.

[Tyler H]

5:50 "Either Japan had to be crippled by no-oil or they had to strike.

But certainly America had forced their hand in this way"

Sounds like the USA only ostracized Japan, violence not justified.

 

I thought the embargo meant they not only refused to trade the requisite materials but also forcibly prevented any nation from doing so. If so then it is not merely ostracism but the initiation of force. Even if it was merely ostracism, the fact that they knew Japan was going to attack Pearl Harbor and withheld that information from the commanding officers on the base is evidence to me (although certainly not conclusive) that they were indeed trying to provoke Japan to attack as an excuse to enter the war.

[Donnadogsoth]

Whilst I appreciate how horrible the effects of the A-bomb detonations were, all else I know is that the Japs were stubborn sods and needed an atrocity to get them to simmer down.  Well, they got two for the price of one.

[Tyler H]

Whilst I appreciate how horrible the effects of the A-bomb detonations were, all else I know is that the Japs were stubborn sods and needed an atrocity to get them to simmer down.  Well, they got two for the price of one.

They were literally in the process of surrendering.

[Donnadogsoth]

They were literally in the process of surrendering.

 

Was that the instance where the Japanese sent a message to the US, and the wording was, shall we say, overly delicate and somewhat ambiguous, thus leading the US officials to dismiss its value as a surrender letter?

[M.2]

They were literally in the process of surrendering.

The question was not whether they were surrendering. It was if they were surrendering conditionally or unconditionally. For whatever reason, the US rejected the conditions and demanded unconditional surrender.

[Tyler H]

The question was not whether they were surrendering. It was if they were surrendering conditionally or unconditionally. For whatever reason, the US rejected the conditions and demanded unconditional surrender.

So sorry, I didn't mean to downvote that, I upvoted your previous post to rectify.

 

Was that the instance where the Japanese sent a message to the US, and the wording was, shall we say, overly delicate and somewhat ambiguous, thus leading the US officials to dismiss its value as a surrender letter?

As far as I know the Japanese said "hey we'll surrender, we just want to keep our emperor," and the US said "nope," dropped two nukes on civilian populations, and then let them keep their emperor anyways. I'll take a look into that letter though, it's certainly possible they were using the process of surrender to delay for some tactical purpose. Regardless, were Hiroshima and Nagasaki the most necessary targets?

[luxfelix]

^I got you covered on the unintentional downvote.

 

If I recall, an embargo is a state using force to keep any of its own subjects from trading with the embargoed nation, whereas a blockade is the use of force to keep anyone from trading with the blockaded nation.

 

Some time ago, there was a post on this forum with a presentation about the counter-productiveness of total war, using the Mongolian invasions as an example of how city-scale massacres caused more resistance to their rule -- this was a point in parallel to the dropping of the bombs.

 

An interesting tangent to this discussion is how, initially, Mussolini and Hirohito were not keen to team up into the Axis powers; Mussolini was jilted over the League of Nation's condemnation of their war with Ethiopia (where before Mussolini was in favor of restoring Austria as a buffer against Germany), and Hirohito was likewise jilted by the League's condemnation of their support of the last Qing emperor in Manchuria (a puppet state for resources and buffer against the Soviets).

 

Long story short, they made enemies of former allies, appeased their enemies, and set the stage for their own histrionic self-aggrandizing (and the power to reshape the world again).

[saspatz]

An interesting article http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/09/why-nagasaki/ , Here there are no moral arguements at all. It's all about the actions and influence of the military industrial complex that was later talked about by Eisenhower https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-jvHynP9Y .

[gerald_menzel]

One night at the pub, some guy punches you. You may have provoked him, he might have been too stubborn to apologize. Who knows. Details are a bit hazy. So, the next day you track down where the guy lives. You go and burn down his house. Several members of his family die in the flames. But you feel better. Justice has been done. 

 

Years later, the people at the pub still debate whether, how or to what extend you had provoked the guy. And whether, when and how sincerely he wanted to apologize and maybe even buy you a beer. These are the pertinent points left to discuss, after all. Some say, your actions were against the pub rules. Others say, that - quite the opposite - the pub rules left you with no other cause of action. The pub rules are complicated.

 

“Who knows what the guy would have done next if he hadn’t got his house burned down to send him a message!? Yes, it is of course regrettable that some of his family had to die. But the guy should have known what he got himself into! In the grand scheme of things, burning down his house surely helped to prevent more damage than it caused!”

 

Most people outside the pub are somewhat indifferent in regards to what happened back then. “It was a pub fight, after all. And such things happen in pub fights. Who’s to say who really was in the right or in the wrong? Nothing to learn from.”

[Donnadogsoth]

 

One night at the pub, some guy punches you. You may have provoked him, he might have been too stubborn to apologize. Who knows. Details are a bit hazy. So, the next day you track down where the guy lives. You go and burn down his house. Several members of his family die in the flames. But you feel better. Justice has been done. 

 

Years later, the people at the pub still debate whether, how or to what extend you had provoked the guy. And whether, when and how sincerely he wanted to apologize and maybe even buy you a beer. These are the pertinent points left to discuss, after all. Some say, your actions were against the pub rules. Others say, that - quite the opposite - the pub rules left you with no other cause of action. The pub rules are complicated.

 

“Who knows what the guy would have done next if he hadn’t got his house burned down to send him a message!? Yes, it is of course regrettable that some of his family had to die. But the guy should have known what he got himself into! In the grand scheme of things, burning down his house surely helped to prevent more damage than it caused!”

 

Most people outside the pub are somewhat indifferent in regards to what happened back then. “It was a pub fight, after all. And such things happen in pub fights. Who’s to say who really was in the right or in the wrong? Nothing to learn from.”

 

 

I think it was more like, some guy in a bar sucker punches you and kicks you in the ribs, telling you, "I'll be back" while going around the neighbourhood on an assault, theft, murder, and rape spree.  You calculate, correctly, that if you burn his house down, he will calm the heck down and stop what he's doing.  In the process some of his family members die.  He's unhappy, you find it regrettable, but in the end peace has been restored to the neighbourhood.

[neeeel]

I think it was more like, some guy in a bar sucker punches you and kicks you in the ribs, telling you, "I'll be back" while going around the neighbourhood on an assault, theft, murder, and rape spree.  You calculate, correctly, that if you burn his house down, he will calm the heck down and stop what he's doing.  In the process some of his family members die.  He's unhappy, you find it regrettable, but in the end peace has been restored to the neighbourhood.

 

To be fair , it wasnt like that at all. It was more like, you burn his house down, and his neighbours house, and his whole city.

[Tyler H]

I think it was more like, some guy in a bar sucker punches you and kicks you in the ribs, telling you, "I'll be back" while going around the neighbourhood on an assault, theft, murder, and rape spree.  You calculate, correctly, that if you burn his house down, he will calm the heck down and stop what he's doing.  In the process some of his family members die.  He's unhappy, you find it regrettable, but in the end peace has been restored to the neighbourhood.

This speaks to a problem I see over and over again that is pivotal to the cycle of violence. Punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. If someone steals from you, you have the right to repossess the stolen goods. You do not have the right to steal from someone else just because you were stolen from. If some guy beats you up or even murders your family you do not get to murder his. And if some belligerent head of state unprovokingly (arguably not the case with Japan) attacks your country's citizens, you don't get to slaughter and mutilate hundreds of thousands of innocent propagandized people. If society continues to excuse the slaughter of innocents to punish the guilty we will never see the end of violence.

[Donnadogsoth]

This speaks to a problem I see over and over again that is pivotal to the cycle of violence. Punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. If someone steals from you, you have the right to repossess the stolen goods. You do not have the right to steal from someone else just because you were stolen from. If some guy beats you up or even murders your family you do not get to murder his. And if some belligerent head of state unprovokingly (arguably not the case with Japan) attacks your country's citizens, you don't get to slaughter and mutilate hundreds of thousands of innocent propagandized people. If society continues to excuse the slaughter of innocents to punish the guilty we will never see the end of violence.

 

The problem I see with your premise, of not killing innocents, is that if this catches on, then in order to win the enemy merely has to exploit this weakness in our resolve.  They can chain innocents to their artillery pieces, they can strap them onto their tanks, they can embed them in their infantry platoons, and so forth.  While we revel in our morality, they proceed to kick our ass.

[Tyler H]

The problem I see with your premise, of not killing innocents, is that if this catches on, then in order to win the enemy merely has to exploit this weakness in our resolve.  They can chain innocents to their artillery pieces, they can strap them onto their tanks, they can embed them in their infantry platoons, and so forth.  While we revel in our morality, they proceed to kick our ass.

I don't think that's the same circumstance. There are different levels of choice and avoidability while acting in self-defense as opposed to what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If someone is shooting at me while holding an innocent person as a body shield, who is responsible for that person's injury? The hostage-taker of course. If I could avoid causing injury to the innocent I will, but not at the expense of myself or more innocents. The moral responsibility does not rest on my shoulders, but the initiator who created the circumstance. The US did not have to put those people to death to get to the perpetrators. They could have hit military targets or the emperor himself, but they didn't. There's a major difference between unavoidable in the moment collateral damage due to the cowardice of the evil actor and after the fact retaliatory measures against the innocent, which in my opinion are just as cowardly. Each side acts out against the less powerful to minimize their own risk and think they've accomplished some feat of heroism.

[Donnadogsoth]

I don't think that's the same circumstance. There are different levels of choice and avoidability while acting in self-defense as opposed to what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If someone is shooting at me while holding an innocent person as a body shield, who is responsible for that person's injury? The hostage-taker of course. If I could avoid causing injury to the innocent I will, but not at the expense of myself or more innocents. The moral responsibility does not rest on my shoulders, but the initiator who created the circumstance. The US did not have to put those people to death to get to the perpetrators. They could have hit military targets or the emperor himself, but they didn't. There's a major difference between unavoidable in the moment collateral damage due to the cowardice of the evil actor and after the fact retaliatory measures against the innocent, which in my opinion are just as cowardly. Each side acts out against the less powerful to minimize their own risk and think they've accomplished some feat of heroism.

 

You make an interesting point.  Why didn't they drop the Bombs on military targets?

[luxfelix]

^I can only report that, in part, military targets -- and a good number of strategic roads -- were very difficult to bomb with the technology of the time since they were often entrenched in mountainous terrain.

 

Other than that, civilians are often targeted as a means to demoralize a nation; though, even that can backfire by causing the opposite to occur.

 

I wonder if some of the motives of the war (and others) was to prepare for the next one, perpetuating their power.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

You make an interesting point.  Why didn't they drop the Bombs on military targets?

 

Backing up Luxfelix, even though the bombs were so destructive, they were wildly inaccurate. Until proper rocket systems were built to deliver them, only cities were big enough to "target".

[Tyler H]

^I can only report that, in part, military targets -- and a good number of strategic roads -- were very difficult to bomb with the technology of the time since they were often entrenched in mountainous terrain.

 

Other than that, civilians are often targeted as a means to demoralize a nation; though, even that can backfire by causing the opposite to occur.

 

I wonder if some of the motives of the war (and others) was to prepare for the next one, perpetuating their power.

Backing up Luxfelix, even though the bombs were so destructive, they were wildly inaccurate. Until proper rocket systems were built to deliver them, only cities were big enough to "target".

How accurate does a 20 kiloton nuclear bomb need to be?

 

You make an interesting point.  Why didn't they drop the Bombs on military targets?

I think that having the foresight that the US would not remain the only nuclear power in the world, the administration did not want to set a precedent of killing heads of state. Leaders tend to sacrifice the peasants rather than risk their own necks.

[Tyler H]

 

 

Though perhaps that still does not explain why military installments were not targeted.

[Donnadogsoth]

Though perhaps that still does not explain why military installments were not targeted.

 

An atrocity would, by definition, have more shock and horror value than would an attack on a military installation.  Soldiers tend to think of themselves, at their best, as defending their innocent populations from foreign depredations.  Targetting those innocents directly would undercut the very raison d'etre of their military, in a dramatic and patent way.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

As per usual, I turn to Carroll Quigley to help sort my historical mind out. Keep in mind that, though this guy was brilliant and had access to resources that most other historians didn't, this book was published in 1966 and therefore he only had the resources available to him at that time.

 

 

Chapter 61 — The Twentieth-Century Pattern

The decision to use the bomb against Japan marks one of the critical turning points in
the history of our times. ...The scientists who were consulted had no information on the
status of the war itself, had no idea how close to the end Japan already was, and had no
experience to make judgments on this matter. The politicians and military men had no
real conception of the nature of the new weapon or of the drastic revolution it offered to
human life. To them it was simply a "bigger bomb," even a "much bigger bomb," and, by
that fact alone, they welcomed it.

Some people, like General Groves, wanted it to be used to justify the $2 billion they
had spent. A large group sided with him because the Democratic leaders in the Congress
had authorized these expenditures outside proper congressional procedures and had
cooperated in keeping them from almost all members of both houses by concealing them
under misleading appropriation headings. Majority Leader John W. McCormack (later
Speaker) once told me, half joking, that if the bomb had not worked he expected to face
penal charges. Some Republicans, notably Congressman Albert J. Engel of Michigan,
had already shown signs of a desire to use congressional investigations and newspaper
publicity to raise questions about misuse of public funds. During one War Department
discussion of this problem, a skilled engineer, Jack Madigan, said: "If the project
succeeds, there won't be any investigation. If it doesn't, they won't investigate anything
else." Moreover, some air-force officers were eager to protect the relative position of
their service in the postwar demobilization and drastic reduction of financial
appropriations by using a successful A-bomb drop as an argument that Japan had been
defeated by air power rather than by naval or ground forces.

After it was all over, Director of Military Intelligence for the Pacific Theater of War
Alfred McCormack, who was probably in as good position as anyone forjudging the
situation, felt that the Japanese surrender could have been obtained in a few weeks by
blockade alone: "The Japanese had no longer enough food in stock, and their fuel
reserves were practically exhausted. We had begun a secret process of mining all their
harbors, which was steadily isolating them from the rest of the world. If we had brought
this operation to its logical conclusion, the destruction of Japan's cities with incendiary
and other bombs would have been quite unnecessary. But General Norstad declared at
Washington that this blockading action was a cowardly proceeding unworthy of the Air
Force. It was therefore discontinued."

Even now it is impossible to make any final and impartial judgment of the merits of the decision.

The degree to which it has since been distorted for partisan purposes may be seen
from the contradictory charges that the efforts to get a bomb slowed down after the defeat
of Germany and the opposite charge that they speeded up in that period. The former
charge, aimed at the scientists, especially the refugees at Chicago who had given America
the bomb by providing the original impetus toward it, was that these scientists, led by
Szilard, were anti-Nazi, pro-Soviet, and un-American, and worked desperately for the
bomb so long as Hitler was a threat, but on his demise opposed all further work for fear it
would make the United States too strong against the Soviet Union. The opposite charge
Noms that the Manhattan District worked with increasing frenzy after Germany's defeat,
because General Groves was anti-Soviet. A variant of this last charge is that Groves was
a racist and was willing to use the bomb on non-whites like the Japanese but unwilling to
use it against the Germans. It is true that Groves in his report of April 23, 1945, which
was presented to President Truman by Secretary Stimson two days later, said that Japan
had always been the target. The word "always" here probably goes hack only to the date
on which it was realized that the bomb would be so heavy that it could not be handled by
any American plane in the European theater and, if used there, would have to be dropped
from a British Lancaster, while in the Pacific the B-29 could handle it.

It seems clear that no one involved in making the decision in 1945 had any adequate picture of the situation.

The original decision to make the bomb had been a correct one based on fear that
Germany would get it first. On this basis the project might have been stopped as soon as
it Noms clear that Germany was defeated without it. By that time other forces had come
into the situation, forces too powerful to stop the project. It is equally clear that the defeat
of Japan did not require the A-bomb, just as it did not require Russian entry into the war
or an American invasion of the Japanese home islands. But, again, other factors involving
interests and nonrational considerations were too powerful. However, if the United States
had not finished the bomb project or had not used it, it seems most unlikely that the
Soviet Union would have made its postwar efforts to get the bomb.

There are several reasons for this: (1) the bomb's true significance was even more
remote from Soviet political and military leaders than from our own, and would have
been too remote to make the effort to get it worthwhile if the bomb had never been
demonstrated; (2) Soviet strategy had no interest in strategic bombing, and their final
decision to make the bomb, based on our possession of it, involved changes in strategic
ideas, and the effort, almost from scratch, to obtain a strategic bombing plane (the Tu-4)
able to carry it; and (3) the strain on Soviet economic resources from making the bomb
was very large, in view of the Russian war damage. Without the knowledge of the actual
bomb which the Russian leaders obtained from our demonstration of its power, they
would almost certainly not have made the effort to get the bomb if we had not used it on
Japan.

 

Note: The online text I copied this from included this as well, which is not from the original book:

[Russia was also working on the bomb. Russia was well aware of German
progress in bomb development at the time.]

 

On the other hand, if we had not used the bomb on Japan, we would have been quite
incapable of preventing the Soviet ground forces from expanding wherever they were
ordered in Eurasia in 1946 and later. We do not know where they might have been
ordered because we do not know if the Kremlin is insatiable for conquest, as some
"experts" claim, or is only seeking buffer security zones, as other "experts" believe, but it
is clear that Soviet orders to advance were prevented by American possession of the A-
bomb after 1945. It does seem clear that ultimately Soviet forces would have taken all of
Germany, much of the Balkans, probably Manchuria, and possibly other fringe areas
across central Asia, including Iran. Such an advance of Soviet power to the Rhine, the
Adriatic, and the Aegean would have been totally unacceptable to the United States, but,
without the atom bomb, we could hardly have stopped it. Moreover, such an advance
would have led to Communist or Communist-dominated coalition governments in Italy
and France. If the Soviet forces had advanced to the Persian Gulf across Iran, this might
have led to such Communist-elected governments in India and much of Africa.

From these considerations it seems likely that American suspension of the atomic
project after the defeat of Germany or failure to use the bomb against Japan would have
led eventually to American possession of the bomb in an otherwise intolerable position of
inferiority to Russia or even to war in order to avoid such a position (but with little hope,
from war, to avoid such inferiority). This would have occurred even if we assume the
more optimistic of two assumptions about Russia: (1) that they would not themselves
proceed to make the bomb and (2) that they are not themselves insatiably expansionist.
On the whole, then, it seems that the stalemate of mutual nuclear terror without war in
which the world now exists is preferable to what might have occurred if the United States
had made the decision either to suspend the atomic project after the defeat of Germany or
to refuse to use it on Japan. Any other possible decisions (such as an open demonstration
of its power before an international audience in order to obtain an international
organization able to control the new power) would probably have led to one of the two
outcomes already described. But it must be clearly recognized that the particular
stalemate of nuclear terror in which the world now lives derives directly from the two
decisions made in 1945 to continue the project after the defeat of Germany and to use the

bomb on Japan.

 

 

Not saying I agree with it, and I'm not saying that this justifies the bombing any way whatsoever on Japan, but when I look at the historical situation and I take enough steps back to see the overall general picture of the whole earth, I really wonder how Russia would have behaved had the bomb not been demonstrated at the end of the war.

 

Then again, had the bomb not been dropped and Russia had behaved as Quigley describes above (immediately conquering most of Europe, Eurasia, and China), that in and of itself would have been ample opportunity and justification to drop the bomb on Russia. If the bomb didn't really have any real military significance at the time and was used primary to scare the living shit out of the other side, then hitting Russia certainly would have been even scarier to Russia than hitting Japan.

 

Then again, that implies all-out war with Russia. Bleh. Confusing shit.

[Tyler H]

As per usual, I turn to Carroll Quigley to help sort my historical mind out. Keep in mind that, though this guy was brilliant and had access to resources that most other historians didn't, this book was published in 1966 and therefore he only had the resources available to him at that time.

 

 

 

 

Not saying I agree with it, and I'm not saying that this justifies the bombing any way whatsoever on Japan, but when I look at the historical situation and I take enough steps back to see the overall general picture of the whole earth, I really wonder how Russia would have behaved had the bomb not been demonstrated at the end of the war.

 

Then again, had the bomb not been dropped and Russia had behaved as Quigley describes above (immediately conquering most of Europe, Eurasia, and China), that in and of itself would have been ample opportunity and justification to drop the bomb on Russia. If the bomb didn't really have any real military significance at the time and was used primary to scare the living shit out of the other side, then hitting Russia certainly would have been even scarier to Russia than hitting Japan.

 

Then again, that implies all-out war with Russia. Bleh. Confusing shit.

 

Is this also from Tragedy and Hope? I found these excerpts quite interesting (referring to your quote here).

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Is this also from Tragedy and Hope? I found these excerpts quite interesting (referring to your quote here).

 

Yup! Sorry I forgot to include the page numbers. It's from the chapter The New Age, getting close(ish) to the end of the book.

[luxfelix]

In reference to the bombing, that applies to conventional technology of the time prior to the atomic bomb; otherwise, accuracy is only a concern if they wanted to avoid civilian casualties.

 

With regards to the show of force to the USSR, by not using the bomb directly on them, the Allies would have a stronger adversary for the coming Cold War (where prolonging war is the goal to maintain control); likewise, it is documented in the book, "The Creature of Jekyll Island", that the USSR was funded by moneyed interests from the Allied nations.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

 likewise, it is documented in the book, "The Creature of Jekyll Island", that the USSR was funded by moneyed interests from the Allied nations.

 

This is the part that frustrates the shit out of me in this whole Cold War story. I think G. Edward Griffin got his info from Antony C. Sutton, who wrote the book Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution.

 

It makes sense, though. Communism doesn't produce anything, so obviously they would need to have an outside source of resources.

[Rventurelli]

I believe this summarises the arguments put forward by Mr.Molyneux. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_weber.html

 

In researching this topic for myself, I have found many conflicting data and sources. However, there are some things everyone agrees on:

1. Japan was losing

2. The japanese government was not in agreement over the issue of surrender.

3. The japanese pled for a conditional surrender before the bombs. (contents are not agreed upon) The plea was rejected nevertheless.

4. 2 Bombs were dropped. Motives are not agreed upon.

3. It was Emperor Hirohito who gave the final Word to surrender unconditionally. He personally broadcasted via radio to his troops and citizens.

 

My argument:

Asia! We are talking about a country in Asia. The conventional rules of war do not apply in Asia. The personal opinions of Eisenhower and others do not matter, since they did not know the mentality of the japanese people. We have as example the case of China: When Japan invaded China, they had seized all means of production, all major cities. There was no China anymore. And yet, somehow, the war was still on with the chinese.

With the japanese being even more stubborn that the chinese, I would argue that the japanese people would have continued to fight if the Emperor had not ordered his people to stand down.

And no, the Emperor was not the dictator of Japan, he was the god of the japanese people, and even the amiracans knew that the Emperor cannot be removed. You cannot remove a god. The one in charge of the war was Hideki-Tojo, the prime minister, who was fired by the Emperor shortly before the end.

According to the Emperor himself, it was the bombs that persuaded him to take the Wheel and surrender.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm

 http://www.taiwandocuments.org/receipt.htm

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hirohito

 

Remaining Question: Was the USA justified in seeking unconditional surrender from the Japan? Was the USSR right in rejecting a conditional surrender from Germany? We do not know. Everyone who claims to know is just speculating. The Emperor's Word ended the war, and that's that.

One thing most people do not understand about Japan is that the Emperor in Japan's history was always a symbol and never had any real power. People thought of him as a God, but he basically never did anything and therefore was never touched, never suffered a coup or assassination attempt. When he ordered the surrender, it was the first time that anyone in the public had ever heard his voice and the first and last order he ever gave. And then again, it is not necessarily that he had the power -- it was just the influence and respect the society put on him.