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TechnoratiReinterpreting Early August
In the 17 years that I have been writing this column, my privilege has been to say what I think, even knowing readers might disagree. Most years, in this first week of August, I have observed the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings by casting a critical eye back on President Truman’s order. “A mistake and a crime,’’ was one of my titles. Those columns have yearly generated more disagreement from readers than anything else I’ve written.
When it comes to the atomic bombing of Japan, our nation divides between those for whom the question remains abstract and unreckoned with, and those for whom it is intensely personal and settled. As someone with no direct memory of the events (I was 2 years old), I necessarily fall into the first category, but I have learned a lot from those whose intimate memory of the 1945 explosions remains defining.
Many of the letters I receive convey versions of what the historian and former Marine William Manchester wrote about his reaction to the bomb: “We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all.’’ After Hitler’s defeat, hundreds of thousands of young Americans were braced for a bloody denouement in the Pacific, and, in a snap, it was over. They and their families could feel only relief. The end of the war brought the nation its first feeling of unbridled happiness in years. And why shouldn’t that stamp the memory of early August forever?
But what is memory anyway? Not merely a mode of returning to a past moment and reliving it, like a fossil stuck in amber. Memory is the faculty by which humans actively interpret experience. What Aug. 6 meant in 1945 is not what it meant in 1946, when John Hersey published his searing article “Hiroshima’’ in The New Yorker; in 1948, when the US Air Force institutionalized atomic attack as strategy against Moscow; in 1949, when the Soviets obtained their own atomic bomb; in 1952, when the hydrogen bomb (“the genocidal weapon’’ as opposed physicists referred to it) was born. And so on. At each point, in looking back, the meaning of what happened in 1945 necessarily changed, and that process has continued until today, when humanity stands at the threshold of the Second Nuclear Age.
To remember is to reinterpret. Therefore, it takes nothing away from the authentic and unforgettable experience of the World War II generation to suggest that Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb was far more complex - and morally charged - than either he or his contemporaries thought at the time. The bomb was justified as necessary to bring about the Japanese surrender, but historians conclude now, with varying degrees of consensus, that diplomacy could have done the job. There are good reasons to conclude that Truman was at least as concerned with heading off Soviet aggression as he was with finishing off Japanese resistance. And today, it can be acknowledged that US air assaults with conventional bombs in the last six months of the war (killing more than a million civilians) had already made moot the ethical question about using the atomic bomb. “To worry about the morality of what we were doing,’’ as Curtis LeMay put it, “ - Nuts!’’
The point of the annual early August commemorative exercise has never been to look back judgmentally on the past from the saddle of a moral high horse, as if - had we been there, knowing what they knew, feeling what they felt - we’d have behaved differently. The urgent task of moral reckoning is not about the past, but about the present and future. To conclude that the United States and the world - not to mention Japan - would be better off had the atomic bombs not been used is to raise a fundamental question about the nuclear arsenal on which American power has depended ever since. To firmly regret atomic use in the past is to invite absolute renunciation of nuclear weapons in the present and future. That there was an untried way to act then means there is an untried way to act now. The World War II survivors, in fact, testify that human survival is itself the new moral imperative that changes the meaning of early August.
40 Comments so far
Show AllThe war with Japan would have ended a few weeks later anyway without the atomic bombs being dropped or the Western Allies having to invade the mainland of Japan. The only problem for the Western Allies would have been that half of Japan and all of Korea would have ended up under the control of the Soviet Union.
Two of the most important battles of the Second World War in the Far East took place between the Soviet Union and Japan and few in the West have even heard of them.
The first in 1939, the Battle of Khalkin Gol, ended in the defeat of the Japanese who had intended to occupy Siberia to obtain essential raw materials. The loss resulted in two decisions by Japan
1. Instead of going north to acquire raw materials, the Japanese decided to go south resulting in war with the United States.
2. The Japanese decided to never attack the Soviet Union again, even when Hitler's armies were at the gates of Moscow.
At Yalta, Stalin had promised that within three months of the end of the war against Germany, the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan in the east. And he kept his promise when on August 9th, 1945 roughly twenty Soviet Army Groups invaded Manchuria, capturing most of Manchuria (area size of Western Europe), the northern part of the Korean peninsula, southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands in less than a month.
While Stalin had been aware of the development of the atomic bomb through the activities of his intelligence services, he was not aware that the US intended to use them against Japan starting with Hiroshima on August 6th but had always planned the attack on Japan to meet his obligations from Yalta. He then intended to invade the northern Japanese Island of Hokkaido before the US invasion of Kyushu.
Truman certainly knew that the Soviet Union intended to enter the war against Japan in early August, 1945 as Stalin had told him it would at Yalta but since the Soviets kept the scale of their operation secret from the Japanese until after it was launched, it is also likely that the Soviets kept it secret from Truman. Since the next stage of the US invasion of Japan, Operation Olympic, was planned for October 1945, there was little military imperative on the US to drop the atomic bombs when they did but there was a political imperative to use them before the war in Japan ended so that the US could test them against real targets and to warn the Soviet Union.
It is probably correct to say that while the Japanese were aware of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, etc, they were not aware of the scale of the operation so its impact on the Japanese decision to surrender is debatable but without the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese would have soon realized the scale and success of the Soviet operation, calculated that the war was over and surrendered as quickly as possible to the Western Allies to avoid occupation by the Soviet Union.
So the atomic bombs certainly shortened the war by a few weeks and ensured US control of Japan and South Korea but the Operation Downfall (Western Allies invasion of Japan) would have been unnecessary and few of those Marines would have died.
It is easy for us to second guess Truman. Put yourself in his shoes. He had had less science in his background than most fifth-graders today have. Yes, he loved to read, but most of his reading was biographies of men of the past. He had to rely totally on his advisors. He became president when the United States was in its second most serious crisis (after the Civil War). His world was spinning around him and he had to make a decision based on what he was told, not what he knew.
Did he know the reasons for the selection of targets? Did he have any idea how big a bang the bomb would make? He probably approached the decision the way he had directed artillery barrages in his war--put in the coordinates and let the shell fly, keep shooting and then move up and fire again. The difference was that his advisers told him he might be able to shoot one round and rest.
I have a friend who is a historian. Characteristic of her approach is always to assign an ignoble motive to the men she does not like, and forgive every failing of the men she loves. They are all either saints or sinners, but no normal people.
America did what was NECESSARY to end the war! There was a civil war in China. Japan got involed. The Japanese plan was simple;use the civil war as there “momentum” to take over China, and while doing so kill EVERY CHINK that stood in there way! They made killing civilians an art form in ways that are still difficult to imagine!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAp8bSdE5MQ
Sometimes even good people and nations acting as the hand of god must comit horrible crimes against humanity! God is known to use Satan against himself from time to time! This all had to come to an end! There was truly no other way to show the Japanese that it all was futile! They would NEVER rule Asia again, and NO ONE in Asia would miss them!
They were willing to turn most of there young population into suicide fighters in a desperate last ditch attempt to avoid a land invasion. Nuclear weapons and the threat of gass weapons being used showed them 1 simple thing;Kamikaze was no longer blowing there way! The wind had turned! Sometimes you just need to know when to stop, and the Japanese murderous racist imperialists didn’t know that, untill it was too late!
It is easy to second-guess Truman.
That's no reason to avoid it.
To the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I offer my feeble apologies and regrets and shame. As I keep doing every year. And also, as I do eery year, I weep with you.
To the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I offer my feeble apologies and regrets and shame. As I keep doing every year. And also, as I do eery year, I weep with you.
“To worry about the morality of what we were doing,’’ as Curtis LeMay put it, “ - Nuts!’’
Hey, that's the defense the Nazis at Nuremberg should have used. The Nazis gassed, starved and shot civilians, and America just fire bombed and incinerated them. In many ways, America was no better than Nazi Germany. That's what dropping the Atomic bomb on innocent civilians means to me.
The first bomb could have been dropped on Japanese soil in a remote area for their leaders to observe first or at least on a military target, not directly on civilians. There is no justification for dropping bombs, atomic or otherwise, on civilians.
By virtue of their uniqueness, the atom bombs could only be 'demonstrations' of our new-found overwhelming power. This means that no matter what justification we felt in dropping them, or afterward, they were still demonstrations to an unwary world, technological demonstrations and thus quite different from the firebombings at Tokyo or Dresden.
I think what sticks in the craw of so many is that the many civilians who died of the bomb were thus part of a demonstration and, crucially, not even the primary part. The primary demonstration was the destruction of an entire cities infrastructure with one bomb. The human losses were secondary, in that if you can destroy a building, the knowledge that you can also destroy a life is useless.
We owned the skies over Japan at the time, we could have broadcast any warning we wanted. We could have destroyed both Hiroshima AND Nagasaki without a single life lost. But thats not what we did. And I think that, in the context of demonstrating the awesome technological power that ended the war (to anyone with half a brain), that we chose to include human casualties as an afterthought is something we should be ashamed of.
The war was over. It was over the moment a successful test was conducted at Alamogordo. The scientists all knew it, which is why they cheered. The Japanese didn't know it because they had no idea of our newfound awesome power, but they wouldn't have been hard to impress: power was something Tojo Japan understood above all. The shame is that Truman, somehow, didn't know it. The war was over, and no one needed to die in either city. There's something about the decision to drop the bombs on habitated cities that reminds one of Joseph Mengele, or of the Japanese doctors who experimented on prisoners.
Naked terrorism, although we often prefer not to recognize it for what it is, sometimes does have impacts that are perceived by the terrorist as being useful to the cause and that cannot be achieved without human sacrifice -- assuming one even regards that sacrifice as human which may be doubtful in some cases.
One cannot overlook the "yellow peril" mentality of the time, nor the fact that is also had serious consequences, albeit arguably less so, for Japanese-Americans on the home front. Considering that German-Americans weren't treated in like manner, the question arises whether the same "demonstration" would have been carried out in the same manner against Nazi Germany and its inhabitants. Unanswerable in any final sense, of course, but its seems somewhat doubtful.
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."
- Openheimer, quoting Bhagavad Gita upon witnessing the flash of the Trinity Test
"Mr. President I have blood on my hands."
- Oppengheimer to Truman
"Then..." (mockingly) "go wash it off"
then to aide: "show this crybaby scientist the door, I never want to see him again"
- Truman
Sioux Rose
I recall only one individual for whom I declined doing an astrological reading. She had hit--and killed--a man while driving drunk, and continued to drive "under the influence."
I preface my comment with that allegorical illustration because in my mind it fits the U.S. military planners. They are equivalent to that drunken driver. How anyone could witness the levels of devastation wrought by those bombs exploded over Nagasaki & Hiroshima and STILL elect to make and warehouse many more of same is both insane and morally SINful.
When I think of those who entertain such motives, these words come to life:
At Integrity's Wake
The bankers showed of course,
not one among them evidencing a hint of remorse.
Warriors poured in, their medals aglow
completely oblivious to the carnage below.
Military recruiters, their eyes ablaze
prepared to suit newcomers for the next deadly phase.
Fast-forward sixty years to a script unchanged
Led, it would seem, by the same ranks of the deranged.
The AMA on hand, its members beaming with pride,
no matter the thousands delivered to a rough medical ride.
Pangs of hunger from those whose lives were bet on grain;
a disturbing heartless laughter echoed as Wall St's refrain.
Policies devised in Washington, callous and corrupt
Hot ghettos, human petri-dishes threatening to erupt.
Arm the uniformed guard, listen in on all plans,
America has elected to become a ghostly land.
Tears for the countless regions left scarred and burned,
As if the legacy of war allowed nothing to be learned.
Only integrity proved missing from the cast,
Perhaps his days were over, his influence past.
Few things draw up my anger so entirely then this.
As evil and as wrong as it was to drop Nuclear bombs upon cities filled with people nothing gets me more angry then those people who continue to justify it with their lies and distortions and their racist nationalistic CRAP that the lives of Americans were more important.
Sioux Rose sez: "How anyone could witness the levels of devastation wrought by those bombs exploded over Nagasaki & Hiroshima and STILL elect to make and warehouse many more of same is both insane and morally SINful."
***
True, that, Sioux.
But for one minor detail ... nobody's making "more of the same". The thermonuclear weapons now littering the planet by the thousands are orders-of-magnitude more powerful than the little pop-guns dropped on the victims of Japan. Beyond that, have a nice day, everyone.
Sioux Rose
GOEBBELS: I fully understand the technological increment factor, that's what makes it all the worse. My point is still valid. In fact, I have often argued in this forum that these types of "developments" signal a worship of Mars, god of war. If Jesus and what sane people take for God = love, then the absence of love, which is what is required to drop weapons of these magnitudes on everyday persons much like ourselves, is the "force" these individuals serve. Call it darkness, a spiritual blackhole, evil, or pure unapologetic violence. It is all about Mars... yet they (many persons in the armed forces and the churches that back these imperial "adventures) call themselves Christian. It's an unbelievable blasphemy!
I agree & think Goebbels is trying to.
The documentary "White Light, Black Rain" chronicles the facts and the human toll on the receiving end of our bombs. We presume that "what makes us human" is always a good thing.
The power brokers gathered around the table and surmised that, by using the new weapon, it would show the world who will control the planet. By dropping a second bomb, it would show how far we'd go to keep it.
America was and is, e-vil.
And US conservatives can tell other nations they are too dangerous to have nukes (and let's build bunker busters to take out starving NKoreans).
It's normally spelled hypocrisy, not hypocracy, although both spellings are recognized.
Personally, I think the US deliberately stalled on granting the emperor concession to the terms of surrender, so it could:
1. Not waste all the money they spent on the Manhattan project.
2. Take advantage of the unique, never-again opportunity to test the two different bomb types (uranium-gun little boy and plutonium-implosion fat man) on real humans in real cities of distinctly different terain (Hiroshima flat, Nagasaki hilly to mountainous)
3. And perhaps most importantly, to tell the Soviets exactly who would be boss-of-the-postwar-world.
My apologies for the terrible spelling in my post. It was before I had my coffee and I am a terrible typist at the best of times.
VJ Day plus 60
by
Steve Osborn
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The insanity that had begun in 1939 was over.
Imperial Japan had surrendered, its one wish granted.
Few knew it had been trying to surrender for months,
Asking only to keep its Emperor, but no one would listen,
Except a small group who wondered why.
We had a lesson to teach, to Japan and the world at large.
On 16 July, 1945, in the American desert, Trinity was detonated.
Far more powerful than expected, the super weapon worked!
Horrified, many scientists said, “It must never be used.”
The war department said, “Just what we need.”
Intelligence said, “They’re trying to surrender.”
“Bomb an offshore deserted island,” the scientists said.
“Maybe it won’t go off,” the military said, “we’d look foolish.”
“Destroying a city without warning is barbaric,” said the diplomats.
“They really want to surrender,” said intelligence.
“We’ll call the city a military target,” said Truman,
“The Russians will get a big surprise.”
6 August 1945, an elderly gardener looked up from his spade
Admiring the silver plane flying far above.
His shadow remains etched in the concrete wall behind him.
Schoolchildren, housewives, tradesmen
Blown to rags of flesh or vaporized, the lucky ones.
Thousands of others doomed to slow death and disease.
“They keep asking for someone to take their surrender,” said intelligence,
“Can’t we at least talk to them?”
“They have to be taught a lesson and the world must see our power,”
“Besides, we have to test the second bomb,”said the military.
And so the wheels were set in motion for the second demonstration
Of Hell on earth.
9 August 1945, above the city of Kokura, the Gods of Chance roll the dice.
A hundred thousand or more go about their business,
Unsuspecting of the doom flying above the thick cloud cover.
In Nagasaki, the people enjoyed the sunshine as the cloud cover broke.
“Secondary target is clear,” and their world suddenly ended in fire and shock
And radiation sleeting through their bodies.
“Now let them surrender,” said the military, “The test is completed.”
Two cities vaporized, two hundred thousand dead,
Survivors to suffer, some for days, some for decades,
And the nuclear arms race begun.
“By golly, we sure showed them!”
“We’ll let them keep their Emperor.”
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The end of the war and of war itself!
There was dancing in the streets and love in the parks,
The blackouts ended in the streets and the homes.
Japan and Germany licked their wounds and hoped to recover.
In Washington, and the Kremlin, midnight oil was burning.
15 August 2005, nations have risen and fallen;
War and genocide again ravage the world.
Treaties made by thoughtful men have been discarded
In the name of profit and greed; nuclear horror again hovers
Over a world exhausted by war, famine and disease.
Only the aging survivors remember the bloody lesson, taught so long ago.
Steve Osborn
15 August 2005
Thanks Steve. Very moving. And true.
Bombing the two untouched cities enabled our leaders to study the effects of such large explosions. We were able to go in afterwords and find out from the survivors where they were when the bomb went off. This information was then recorded to follow health of these survivors. The result is "Hiroshima & Nagasaki, The Physical, Medical and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings" The Commitee for the compliation of materials on damage caused by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Translated by Ishikawa and Swain, Basic Books, New York 1981 ISBN 0-465-02985-X. Lots of good pictures of the blast and burn effects of the bombs. It is interesting that at the time we had three bombs, one we tested and the other two we used. If the Japanese hadn't surrendered then we would have had to invade. The closest we've had is 9/11. We sure didn't surrender. Bombs R US.
The social/cultural historian, Lewis Mumford, wrote an essay, "The Morals of Extermination" (1959) examining the US decision to make aerial high explosive bombing of civil cities part of its war operations in WW II. There was widespread shock and horror after the Nazi bombing of Guernica, Spain which provoked Picasso's famous painting. Yes, that's the painting the morally deficient Colin Powell had draped at the UN before his infamous speech to justify the soon to be US military assault on the people of Iraq. Mumford recounted the debates inside the Pentagon where he worked in early WW II as to whether the US should adopt the Nazi tactic. We all know the answer they came to, which then ended with the mushroom clouds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, clouds that included the ash of some US prisoners known to be held there. As atomic weapons technology has spread over the past 64 years with many "collateral" victims along the whole chain from uranium mining to downwinders from the bomb test areas to depleted uranium weapons and many others, humankind still faces the question of the morals of extermination. But those decisions remain now, as in the past, under the nuclear trigger fingers of the ruling elites of the oligarchy.
Below me are some good comments and I wish to acknowledge that.
Additionally though: This article, to me, has a strong contemplative tone and I feel that is significant. Ordinarily, as Americans and because we've been 'taught', we focus in our minds the importance of winning our argument (activism or we might call it 'leaderism') or we lay claim that there is NO real argument (passivism, or we might call it 'followerism'). I see these two approaches constantly in the comments. People tend, by their nature to just 'flop' into one way or the other--leader or follower. The danger in either case, activism (leader) or passivism (follower) is not that they shouldn't be, because they can't help but be, but that they become fanatical and lose contact with the real intelligence within the individual. Contemplation is a dimension or ability of our mind, and is a rather lost or shrouded art. But if practriced, it is very helpful in understanding the nature of argument itself, the choices of followerism and leaderism and in so doing, one understands, better, when to be follower and when to be leader. Contemplation is a way of noticing what I will call--'the other'.
That's all.
Think this over if you're interested.
Good meta-comment. I would have to admit that contemplating the real intelligence within some individuals isn't an easy chore. In fact, there are some instances where deeper understanding of the underlying thought processes and their motivations only brings on greater revulsion.
Your point is none the less well made. To whatever extent persuasion is the goal, it's impossible without a full understanding and appreciation of opposing views.
Thank you RV, and you made an excellent extension of what I was attempting to convey.
It is mind boggling that anyone is too stupid to understand what "William Manchester wrote about his reaction to the bomb: “We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all.’’ After Hitler’s defeat, hundreds of thousands of young Americans were braced for a bloody denouement in the Pacific, and, in a snap, it was over."
To prefer revisionist history written by post Viet Nam historians is morally reprehensible as it is written for and contains much ideology rather than truth. Depends on conclusions rather thatn first hand knowledge and contemporary reports and evidence.
To be ignorant enough to prefer sacrificing our Marines instead of the enemy is beyond me, though I'd love to have had anyone making that argument in an assault boat and let them live their decision. Fortunately such small people were not in charge of our country then.
This argument seemed more persuasive before I realized that it was not necessary to kill so many of either.
Clearly an invasion of Japan would have cost American lives and would have killed plenty of Japanese civilians anyway.
However, the war ended not because of the incredible suffering of the Japanese people, but because their leaders recognized inevitable defeat. The US did not need to kill Japanese, but to demonstrate the extent of their capacity to do so.
They could have blown up anything at all that the Japanese could have examined later. It might have cost a few extra bombs, but not thousands of American lives.
Henry, I'm surprised and disappointed. Your misdirections are usually more persuasive.
The contemporary popular sentiment is easily understood, but neither that sentiment nor its rationalization is the real issue. The wartime propaganda providing the basis for both the decision and the sentiment, on the other hand, ...
Yes Henry8 we have heard your arguement that killing Civilians, women and children in order to save the lives of AMERICAN soldiers was justified before.
We have never heard your moral reasoning for suggesting the life of a US Marine worth more then the life of a Japanese Child.
Lt Kelly used your arguement after My Lai.
Chington expressed the same sentiment when he ordered his men to shoot women and Children at Sand creek when he say "Nits become lice"
The Nazis used your arguement when they rounded up Villagers across Poland, France and Russia to be shot against a wall every time a Germans soldiers life lost.
So one more time. Why is the life of a US marine more important then that of a Child of Japanese descent?
By the way. I know you like to ignore the historical record and the FACTS as you continue to delude yourself into believing Japan would never surrender. Macarthur HIMSELF send Truman a memorendum indicating he had received 5 SEPERATE Overtures of surrender on the part of the Japanese Government most of which were versions of the final surrender terms.
He sent this to the US Government BEFORE Roosevelt went to Yalta.
It was the Insistence on UNCONDITONAL surrender that extended the war.
These terms of surrender came BEFORE Iwo Jima.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html
As is the case with most naked acts of power, the justifications are comparably timid. While I am (of course) not advocating the use of thermonuclear armaments on any rational basis, I must point out that the United States has a long history of winning wars (or redoubling victory) by similar tactical decisions (e.g. "Sherman's March", asymmetric resistance to British imperialism, the extremely punitive economic impositions on post-war Germany).
I might point out that the unifying theme is not in fact racially based (although I cannot obviously deny its major influence), but that these outcomes are rather promoted by vengeance.
The strategic considerations involving "shock and awe" are the bewildering achievements of a strategically inept mind at best (think of those who have advocated such an approach). It was not, in my belief, the capability alone that would achieve this purpose, but the successful and unjustified application of the means of utter devastation. In order for this tactic to be successful, it would have to be viewed as an act of vengeance, or the hand that possessed them could neither be truly feared nor trusted.
There is a useful observation posted here about the utility of dropping both bombs which I feel furthers this point of view (i.e. the difference in qualitative aspects, etc.). I also feel that we have surely ventured into the absurd (although valid) when we differentiate the horror of nuclear death and that of fire-bombing.
The idea of dropping an isolated bomb and informing the Japanese, hosting them to witness test-sites, making threats to annihilate, etc., while perfectly logical, are extremely impotent from a strategic viewpoint, in terms of making it up the chain of command. None of these solutions would be viewed as desirable; accommodation does not promote tactical options.
In closing, I would have to say that the reasons for dropping such a bomb would have to be complicated (in the same sense that vengeance is complicated) and in the end, somewhat intentionally irrational. The entire point, it seems to me, is the morality-barren, stone-cold, mercenary gaze it conveys to one's adversaries, etc.
Those who condemn such an action are essentially right in all of the particulars, and are always appreciated for condemning such atrocity. There is always a counterbalance to the affirmations of love and peace that are so overwhelmingly desirable, and I find it useful to contemplate that motivating energy when possible, since it governs so much of our world.
GWnorth: thanks for putting the evidential meat on my visceral response to Henry8.
Henry8: sure, shut your eyes and just ignore the statement of Carroll, as of countless others, that the a-bombing did not shorten the war and save the lives of Americans---the old self-justifying mythology---but was an operation governed by geo-political considerations of post-war rivalry with the Soviet Union. If he and the others are wrong, you had best cite your evidence on this. If not, you might want to stop circulating this long-discredited "life-saving" interpretation to the decision to bomb.
balakirev is correct. There was a proposal to bomb a relatively uninhabited island, which would have achieved the "shock and awe" purposes.
But it was so much more fun to commit mass murder and terrorism.
We didn't even given them time to understand the first blast before dropping another one.
Horrific.
My sympathies, and much more, my admiration and gratitude of those victims of extermination in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- who used and continue to use their suffering to try to bring understanding to the world
instead of trying to "cash it in" to oppress and exploit others like some groups do.
They are beacons for us all.
The A-bombs were dropped on the last cities in Japan untouched by the U.S. bombing campaigns.
Why drop them on these particular untouched cities? Why not rearrange the rubble of Tokyo, Osaka?
Before the decision to drop these bombs was made, different factions among the war planners debated different methods of dropping these bombs.
There was one faction that supported transporting members of the Japanese high command to NM to observe an A-bomb explosion. Another faction supported the bombing of Tokyo harbor as a demonstration of the A-bomb's destructive power. Another faction wanted to bomb the untouched city of Kyoto: the cultural capital of Japan.
The point is is that the A-bombing of two untouched cities was not the only option discussed by strategic planners. The final decision wasn't written in stone.
The questions to ask are: 1. why did strategic planners finally decide upon bombing these two untouched cities? 2. why did they decide on bombing these two cities rather than chosing to follow the path of demonstration bombings? 3. why did they chose to use the bomb twice rather than once?
If one wants an objective historical assessment about the dropping of these two A-bombs on cities populated primarily with civilians, the above questions have to be honestly asked and answered.
Last, the dropping of the A-bombs was not the same as firebombing as horrible and terroristic as that method of warfare is.
These early primitive A-bombs obliterated people, buildings and infrastructure in minutes. In constrast, firebombing took thousands of bombs and several weeks to produce the same destructive outcome. Additionally, A-bombing created a deadly and lingering side effect: radiation poisoning.
"In constrast, firebombing took thousands of bombs and several weeks to produce the same destructive outcome."
Not exactly, Dresden was firebombed on February 14th 1945 and thousands, who were not cremated, were said to be asphyxiated when the resultant firestorm updraft depleted the oxygen.
You mention that the two bombs were dropped on "untouched" cities. This was not an accident or quirk of fate.
Years ago I had the privledge of talking to two survivors, a soldier from Hiroshima and a school girl from Nagasaki (occupations at the time of the bombings). It was a very enlightning discussion. After the bombing, both were very bitter, but over time both had come to the conclusion that these weapons should never, never, ever, be used again, even against the Americans who had caused them so much personal pain.
Hiroshima was known as a "city of peace" because it had never been bombed. People flocked to the city because of its relative safety and minimal military significance. The reason that it was untouched was that the two A-bombs were a grand experiment. We had seen what a bomb would do in the desert, but military planners and scientists wanted to see first hand what would happen to real people in real cities. Nothing like a real world laboratory (with "sub-human" occupants). So that the results of these weapons could be really gauged, it was important to have some cities untouched by conventional bombing. Think about the calousness of such a decision: reserving several cities to be used for future weapons experiments. I guess it is no different today from the unethical engineers who want to see their latest new weapons tested on the people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And why two bombs where one would have acheived the same result? Well, we had two different designs that needed to be tested. And who knows how long it would be before we would have a chance to test the second design on people?
As for a deterrent effect, the woman from Nagasaki said that while they had heard that Hiroshima had been destroyed possibly by some new type of weapon, the details were so sketchy that they had no idea that they should even take cover. And of course there was no information at all available to them on radiation poisoning.
As long as we think force is the ultimate answer, we will never have peace. We will never have justice.
As a young child first learning about the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a history class I thought it was very odd that they would use two different bombs. "Were we testing them or something?" " No we would never do something like that." I thought.
After much self reeducation after leaving my formal schooling, I now realize that they were most likely tests on the one hand along with being a message to the Soviet Union that they best not mess with us after we were done with Japan.
If they just wanted to "scare" Japan into surrendering they could have dropped one of the bombs in a remote part of the island, then give the Japanese leaders a few days to observe the bomb site. We would have then told them that if they didn't surrender, more of those bombs would be dropped on their cities.
I'm sure that would have achieved the same resulting surrender but would have saved a lot of innocent lives.
Now for a hypothetical question.
If Japan had dropped an atomic bomb on a US city, but still lost the war, would we have tried Japan's leaders as war criminals for that act?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are examples -- perhaps the only examples -- of bombing actually achieving the "shock and awe" effect that those who order bombings are always expecting. The rest of the time bombing has a poor track record. Like arguing with people on the other side of your political views, bombing seems to stiffen the resolve of those bombed and make them less, not more determined to fight to the last. At least that's the impression I get from a TV series I watched during the Walter Cronkite rerun celebration called "War and Civilization". Excellent series. I want to watch it again so I ordered the DVDs.
I guess it feels really good to the leaders and high generals. I remember when the catchphrase from Vietnam "We'll bomb them back to a parking lot." Well, they sure tried. We've all heard that factoid that more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than in all of World War II.
I'm not sure wars are ever actually "won" -- they go on until everyone is tired, then they stop for awhile until one side or the other manages to regroup. But bombing with the idea of inducing "shock and awe," to cause the enemy to say, "Okay okay, we get it; you folks are thousands of times more powerful than us; don't hurt us any more" has been a non-success every place it has been tried.