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I watched The Last Mission on History Channel last night. We came close to having to invade the Japanese homeland. That would have cost over a million lives probably. had seen this program before but until then was unaware of the attempted coup agaist the emperor
That is the rationale I have heard for dropping the A-bomb – that so many American soldiers would have been killed in a Japanese invasion. I wonder, though, how much it actually did take part in Truman's decision in using the weapon.
If the Japanese had not surrendered the Allies planned to drop seven more A-bombs according to the program. One would have been on Tokyo. The coup leaders planned to make a radio broadcat telling the population to fight to the last man, woman or child. This was after the Emperor had agreed to surrender but before he made the announcement
The U.S. firebombed Tokyo and Kobe killing thousands of civilian and basically destroyed the cities, yet the Japanese still did not give up. I don't see where Truman had much of a choice to end the war, other than more air assualts, which would have been far worse (for Japan) than 2 a-bombs. IMO
I agree with Ski and remembering what an old friend told me about the invasion plans… he was an aide de camp to one of the planners… 4 years and at least 2 million (total) causalties! Makes the bomb look pretty smart.Also according to at least one source, after Nagasaki, we had no more bombs... just parts and would have required at lesat a couple of weeks for the next raid. Would have offered the Japanese time to get their duck in a row perhaps.
I'm not quite sure about the moral analysis of this, although I realize we've had 60+ years to consider it in retrospect. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the tens of thousands of Japanese who were killed who were unarmed civilians….but again, I'm not quite sure about the moral analysis because of all the factors involved, including those brought up here.I do wonder, though, if Truman's use of the A-bomb was not entirely for conquering the Japanese. Perhaps also a showing for the next bully on the block, the USSR.
True that… consider too, had Japan had the tool and the delivery method do you really doubt they'd have used it on our unarmed civilians?
True, Phid. But adding it together, there were more non-combatant Japanese civilians killed and non-military targets destroyed during the air strikes. If we didn't drop the bombs, we would have just destroyed more cities, if not, the whole country.
Yes, these are all factors which go into a moral analysis of the situation. And yes, I think that the Japanese may have bombed our own civilians; from what I recall on seeing one History Channel show, they had planned on using chemical- or biological-based bombs on San Diego by way of bombers which could fly too high for our fighter jets to reach. See, for example, this post. This is one of the sad things about any war – that these kinds of “moral” decisions need to be made in the first place which ultimately weigh one form of death and destruction against another form of death and destruction. This is why it's best to avoid war in the first place, whenever possible.
This is why it's best to avoid war in the first place, whenever possible.
I hear that and agree completely.
We need to look at this in the context of total war. We have not been involved in a total all out war since WW2. The Japanese did dot hesitate to kill unarmed civilians or helpless POWs. Remember when they sent the balloon bombs on the jet stream to firebomb the Western US. Only casualties were a group of people on a picnic in(I think) Oregon.Look at what they did to the population of Nanking.It is hard to look back from the 21st century and properly judge events over 60 years ago.I personally feel the A-bombs were necessary and need no justification from people who were not alive at the timeJust my 2 cents 🙂
After having read Trumans Bio by David Mcouglah he laid it out as two reasons, and both have been stated here…the saving of American lives and showing Russia they had better tread carefully with the United States.
