60 Years Since Hiroshima 806
cryptoz writes "Today is the 6th of August, 2005, exactly 60 years after the first nuclear device was used in a war. Japan remembers what happened, as do those around the world. Elswhere, we remember where the bomb hit, as well as how it worked." From the article about Japan's observation of the anniversary: "The anniversary comes as regional powers meet in Beijing to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear programme, seen by Tokyo as a threat and one of the reasons behind rising calls in Japan to strengthen its defence and seek closer military ties with the United States. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was among those attending the ceremony in Hiroshima, 690 km (430 miles) southwest of Tokyo." We've previously reported on the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion.
Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
Please read this before commenting (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a wonderful article from the Weekly Standard concerning Truman's choice.
The most salient fact? About 10,000 people per day were dying per day in the Pacific theatre, mostly civilians in Japanese-occupied countries. Any alternative to the bombs that would have caused a one month delay would have wound up with more dead than the bombs themselves.
Remember this before you rattle off about some alternative scheme to end the war.
important to note (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Japan had, at that point, lost control of air and sea (over and around) their nation;
3) Japan was starving it's people and urging them to prepare for "millions of honorable deaths";
4) The Emperor wanted to surrender, but the Japanese military leadership refused to allow it;
5) Japan was warned repeatedly by the USA that refusing to surrender would exact a terrible toll;
6) Japan was seriously dragging their heels, taking weeks to decide, preparing for a defensive land war.
Finally, the US ended the stalemate, without a gruesome land war.
No one in the USA wanted to fight an "Iwo Jima" style battle, one in which hundreds of lives were lost just gaining or losing a couple of yards.
Fought on their home islands, the Japanese would have fought terribly, to the last man woman or child, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost on each side to starvation or this hellish land war.
The bomb, in many ways, was a gift for both sides.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:5, Insightful)
In hindsight, it's easy to say the bombs shouldn't have been dropped. But at the time, things were very, very different.
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:3, Insightful)
I get to spot people with disgusting attitudes like this and mark them 'foe'!
Thanks for standing out in the crowd!
Most of the people who died as a result of being nuked by 'The Americans' were not 'The Japanese' who commited the atrocities.
Grow up.
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, I don't know what world you live in, but the lessons of the past have not been learned, and your "world the way it is today" is on the brink of war. And no, I'm not talking about the "war on terrorism", I'm talking about a constant, low-level, diffuse state of warfare as predicted by Georges Orwell, and as desired by neocons in order to maintain themselves in a position of power.
As for the future, when energy resources start to dwindle (and some expert say they already are right now), you can bet your money on a full-scale war over control of what's left. If you think Hiroshima taught anything to today's world leaders, you're sadly mistaken.
Re:CBC timeline (Score:2, Insightful)
You've obviously never reviewed the body counds from Japan's Rape of Nanking [tribo.org].
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
I already know that there's going to be people arguing back and forth that a) Hiroshima was a tragedy that never should have happened, or b) Hiroshima was necessary because it ended the war/punished the Japanese/etc.
Well, you know what? I don't care about either of those perspectives. Maybe it was necessary, maybe it wasn't, it's history now, and let's treat it as such. But there's one thing about the bomb that nobody in the US seems to realize:
Any country, *any* country, that uses nuclear weapons against another country had better let it weigh on their soul for as long as that country exists. The discussion should be constant, and permanent, and without end. The empathy of the pain that the Japanese people went through should be part and parcel of every conversation about World War II. People should go to sleep every night knowing exactly how serious of a decision that was.
And that's the problem: For every other country whose government's have committed mass murder, whether justifiable or not, there is a sense of history, of ownership of the bad as well as the good, there is a conceivability that they are as much responsible for the past as they are for the present and future.
In the US, we don't have that sense. It's all abstract and textbook, it's all justifications and wartime terminoligy. It's all disconnected and abstracted to the point of science fiction.
So argue all you want about whether it was right, or wrong, or good, or bad, or justifiable, or unjustifiable. To me, I can understand both sides of that debate.
What I can't understand is how most Americans seem to care much about what it means that we sent two Japenese cities into a nuclear hell. Using the bomb was a horrible act, whether or not it was justifiable, and the real tragedy is that the Japanese people were forced to understand that, while we read the headlines, added some notes to the next year's schoolbooks, and then continued on with our lives.
Sympathy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask the survivors of the Bataan Death March [wikipedia.org] how many tears they shed for Japan.
Ask the Philipinos that survived the Manila Massacre [wikipedia.org] how many tears they shed for Japan.
I bet all of the people that carried up pieces of human remains from Pearl Harbor don't give a shit. I bet the veterans of the Pacific island hopping campaign don't give a shit. Nor the prisoners of war all over Asia.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at the scholarly work on the subject. Japan was ready to surrender, they had offered conditional surrender before the bombs were dropped. Of course that was rejected, and no doubt should have been for strategic reasons.
US military officials agreed that Japan was close to surrender, and it's military capability was almost entirely destroyed in the fire-bombings that took place before Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The military dictatorship that influenced and basically forced the Emperor to support it and their ideals has already collapsed under the shame from their losses and failure to defend Japan. Take a look at the 1946 Bombing Survey for more info. Japan was not a significant military threat at the time. Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is a good starting point. Though if you think he's biased you can find the same referenced info elsewhere. Military officials were clear that Japan was not a great threat anymore. Marshall councilled against using the bomb on civilian populations, as did most other advisors and the creators of the weapons.
No evidence backs up the claim that anywhere from half a million, to a million US lives would be required to take Japan. No data at all supports that, indeed the numbers seem to be drawn out of thin air. There is no accurate measurement of how many lives would be needed to take Japan, especially as many suggest that Japan was close to surrender, had little military might, and might not even need to be invaded at all.
It is clear that Truman lied to the American people when he notified them on the bombing of Japan with nuclear weapons. "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
Hiroshima was not a "military base". The aim of dropping the bomb was not to hasten Japanese defeat in order to spare US lives, but rather as a strategic move to check Stalin. Stalin was to declare war on Japan and join in any possible invasion. The US did not want to face another East/West Germany situation, with a possible unfriendly government in the region. Instead they wished to have influence in the region, and to show military might. Taking the first step in the Cold War meant that they had to make a show of power, and dropping the Bomb was that step. It showed the region, Stalin, and the world at large that they were in control. An impressive step was needed to assert this power, and indeed Truman no doubt felt that by asserting US authority and making a power play he could prevent the US from having to fight more wars in the future and scede power to unfriendly governments.
So your point is entirely falacious. Often repeated and held as truth in schools and blindly pro-US people, but there is no factual evidence to support it. Please take a look at all the scholarly work on the subject. It is so one-sided as to be ridiculous. Bombing Japan in order to save hundreds of thousands of US lives is a story without any merit at all.
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2, Insightful)
Not bad at all - remember:
The Japanese started the war with us via strike they hoped would prevent the US from challenging them in the Pacific - unfortunately for them they were wrong.
They had ample opportunity to surrender before that - and after the first bomb, but chose not to. It should have been clear to their leadership that there was no way they would win the war.
While the damage was horrific, fewer died than would have if we decided to blockade them and continue to use regular weapons to force a surrender, invading if needed.
A better question is:
Would Japan and Germany have given as liberal surrender terms and as benign an occupation as they experienced under the Allies?
I think the Chineses, Phillipinos, Indo-Chinese, Poles, French, Dutch, et. al. might be able to shed some light on what a German / Japanese victory might have been like.
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans feel guilty about crap they shouldnt... (Score:4, Insightful)
If truman had the atomic bomb and reasonably believed using this weapon would end the war and would save a million lives he had a DUTY to use it even if the civilian cost was terrible.
If the critics can play monday morning quarterback then so can I. The use of the atomic bomb in the real world as opposed to just tests allowed the world to see how horrible it was and so far has ensured only two have been used in the last 60 years.
If Americans want to feel guilty over something, feel guilty about your SUV's helping to fund terrorism through oil money. we should feel guilty that we have allowed our constitution to be gutted in the name of safety. We should feel guilty that we sent american soldiers over to die in iraq without demanding verifiable proof from their commander in chief for the reasons for going. Theres plenty of things we can feel guilty about without accepting undesserved blame
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe true. There probably as many versions as there are history schoolbooks - in the end, noone knows, history does not repeat and this is clearly an unique event!
But I think this is not, in any way, the point of this slashdot story. It is not about whoever was 'right' in this conflict some 60 years ago.
It is there to show the atrocities of weapons, certain bombs - weapons of mass destruction - against civilian targets.
These anniversaries are there to reflect on whether it is wise to point 1000s of these with a much higher capacity against each other, in 'alert' mode.
Re:A sad day? (Score:2, Insightful)
The way we finished the war saved a lot more lives then would have been lost if we all kept fighting."
You're thinking like a propagandist, not a human being. There was no reason to incinerate an entire city of CIVILIANS, when there would have been military targets that could have served as an equally impressive example of the might that America wielded. The atrocities of the Japanese do not make those of America any less atrocious.
I have a feeling you'd cry foul if someone started rationalizing September 11th by saying, "America started it by occupying places in the Middle East, blah blah blah." So don't try to be a crime against humanity defender.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:2, Insightful)
No, we haven't learned (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm basically convinced that we wanted to study the effects on real targets, and also implicitly threaten Stalin, and those factors were used to justify the targeting. We hated the Japanese enough to consider their use as human Guinnea pigs to be a trivial aspect.
Not sure how to file this aspect, though it's surely not amusing, but we might well have killed more Japanese and learned more about nuclear war by "humanely" hitting Mount Fuji first. A low-level blast planned to create the maximum visual scarring of Mount Fuji would have also kicked up an enormous amount of fallout, and the long-term fatalities would probably have been very high, though the immediate deaths would have been reduced. Of course, part of our ignorance at that time included ignorance of radiation sickness and fallout.
However, looking at the state of the world today, it doesn't seem like we learned much by it. At least nothing important.
By the way, I've lived in Japan for many years. On a clear day, I can see Mount Fuji from my train station.
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:3, Insightful)
But how does it feel -after all pride and duty- to be part of the nation that fired up such a "baby" at first?
It feels a whole hell of a lot better than if Japan or Germany developed it first.
Re:I don't see how this is relevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say you've got that backwards.
The first time, with the two explosions in Japan, was the easiest. It was only afterwards that using them became an unforgivable crime in the eyes of the world.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analogy might be apt if all of asia were has been engaged in guerilla war with the US, but in fact, the Japanese were busy slaughtering their neighboring asian nations at the same time they were fighting us.
Also, this ignores the factors of Israel and its dependence upon US assistance to defend itself, as well as the fact that Saddam invited the second most recent major war between the US and iraq by invading, his rich but relatively defenseless neighbor.
Don't try to pass it off as a humanitarian act (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:CBC timeline (Score:3, Insightful)
The US's top mil leaders disagreed (Score:4, Insightful)
The Japs knew they well 'n truelly beat by Saipan (just read any of the Japanese War ministry papers that were released about 10 years ago), gez by then their war production wasn't even replacing loses by 15% or something, let alone matching war loses, or matching the allies. Even us Aussies alone were almost matching the Japanese in many aspects of war production by then (of course that excludes such things as capital ships 'n subs. Mind you by the last year of the war Japanese aircraft production was abysmal, while such aircraft as Beaufighters, Mustangs & Mosquitoes were being made in Oz). The Japanese only kept fighting because unconditional surrender was unacceptable (which is why unconditional surrender's so rare) as they saw it as a risk to their monarchy.
Actually, the Japs knew they were beat by Midway - they knew the realities of US industrial production (the fact that only 17% of America's war effort was directed at Japan, yet the Americans were more than matching them. These figures become even more spectacular when one realises that Germany was directing arguably 80+% of it's war effort against the Russians) meant they had to force the US to meet it's terms with 6 months of Pearl Harbour or the war was lost. A such Japan had no intention of ever invading Australia, India or the US - their plan was to run amoke, quickly inflicting a number of knockout blows, there-by forcing the allies to accept their terms for peace - recognise the Japanese conquests in China & accept Japanese puppet regimes in the Philipines, Indochina, Malaya & the East Indies. (Going by a doco I saw) by Midway they had given up on the allies accepting terms on the puppet states & just wanted the China conquests recognised, which was still quite rightly unacceptable to the allies. By Saipan their hoped for terms were that the allies would be willing to accept some sort of Japanese hegamony/sphere in Formosa, Manchuria & Korea. By the fall of Germany the Japanese only had 2 conditions left - the monarchy must remain & on paper the surrender must be referred to as a 'negotiated ceasefire' (the Japanese obsession with 'face' is obvious here).
From what I understand the whole 'unconditional surrender' thing started as a policy of faith by Roosevelt & Churchill to Stalin. It became policy in regards to the Nazi regime as an attempt to relieve Stalin's concern/worries/paranoia about the West unilaterally negotiating terms with Hitler. The unconditional surrender policy was only extended to include the Japanese to satisfy American voters, who would otherwise ask 'why are the Germans expected to surrender unconditionally & not the Japs when it was the Japs that attacked us'.
Now lets see what some of America's great war-time leaders thought:-
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
Some things to keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with feeling empathy for those whose lives were harmed by this, regardless if they were on the "good" or "bad" side. They were still human.
There are always many pointless deaths of good people on either side of a war.
Ah, the vacuum some cast events in. (Score:2, Insightful)
You are completely correct (Score:4, Insightful)
The hope, thus, was to convince Japan that they had a new irresistable superweapon. Every effort was made to give the impression that the US possessed a vast aresenal of these bombs, and that they'd just keep dropping them on cities until Japan surrendered unconditonally.
It was such an unprecidented amount of force that it was just totally shocking. Sure, cities were leveled all the time, but it took thousands of bombers with many bombs each to do it, and that's somethign fighter planes could mount a defence against. But here ONE plane with ONE bomb effectively leveled a city. No one had ever seen any power like it, and had the US been telling the truth (in reality those two bombs were all they had at the time), there could be no defence.
Then, of course, there were the after effects which were unknown before that. People who had survived the bomb unscathed, so it seemed, began dying from mysterious problems, later revealed to be from the radiation that was released. So the bomb didn't just kill when it was dropped, it kept on killing even afterwards.
I personally think it is an event to be remembered because it's a demonstration of just how dangerous nuclear weapons are. Those bombs are tame compared to what we have today, and the destruction they unleashed is amazing.
The decision was reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
Recall that Germany was furiously working on the nuke - if things had been differently, London and Moscow would have been targeted.
Recall that millions of civillians and millitary personel were killed as part of the axis war plans .
I would have been angry if the allied powers had a means to immediately end the war, even at great civillian loss, and chose not to use it for fear of later slashdot-weenies whinning about being "nice" during a war.
I've been to the countries occupied by Japan during the 30s and 40s, and the people to this day go out of their way to say "thanks" for the US millitary efforts sixty years ago. Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Australia...
Re:a question (Score:3, Insightful)
A detonation at 60 miles miles, or ten times that range, would have accomplished nothing. It would also have depleted a very small supply of fissionables, produced at enormous cost at Oak Ridge (uranium 235) and Hanford (plutonium).
Save the talk, ye who would say, "What, you're worrying about the cost, when so many lives were lost?" Yes, I am. The US didn't fire the first shot, no matter what YAN conspiracy nutjob (we didn't land on the moon, alien bodies at Area 51, the CIA blew up the Twin Towers, etc.). But we sure as *hell* fired the last shot. We paid a lot to do it, and it was worth it. It saved US lives. Quite a few
As soon as it happened, a very warlike people suddenly decided they were pacifists. MacArthur spent more US $ rebuilding Japan, because contrary to the worst fears of the Japanese, he thought it was the right thing to do. He was dead-on right. That was money well-spent as well. Humanitarian reasons aside, Japan is now a firm ally. They are certainly lined up behind any non-proliferation actions, unless that brutal bastard in N. Korea *forces* them to develop nuclear arms, because the US waffles on something.
They hurt us bad, we hurt them worse, we're all even, and they're our friends. Good friends. I wish it hadn't happened, but not so much as the guys who served at the time. Bet on that, ladies and gentlemen. Don't get all PC, and sobbing over the cruelty of something that happened 60 years ago, and wasn't our fault to begin with. Enjoy what we have--the current friendship of a great people.
At this point, the US and Japan should just go off and build a lunar colony or something together. That's what friends are for, at the nation-state level: to do remarkable things that could not be done alone.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:1, Insightful)
Mod me flamebait too. Fuck this garbage, rational thought is flaimebait because it clashes with what you've been raised to believe? Guess what, you're wrong.
Re:A sad day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, I think both sides are full of shit.
First, NOTHING was necessary. Even if Japan was never going to surrender, we did not have to invade Japan--by that point in the war, they certainly weren't going to invade us anytime soon. We could have precision-bombed (or whatever passed for precision bombing in 1945) their major factories, blockaded their harbors, and they wouldn't have been a threat to anyone anymore.
On the other hand, in a major conflict that will decide the fate of the world, "terrorism" in any conventional sense of the word is not inherently evil. If you cannot stand against the planes that bomb your cities and ships, targeting the civilians that are making the planes that bomb your cities and ships is perfectly reasonable. Additionally, causing "terror" in your enemy and thus compelling them to surrender is a valid and can SAVES LIVES ON BOTH SIDES.
In a nutshell, no we weren't saints when we vaporized and poisoned hundreds of thousands of civilians (and then invaded them and destroyed much of their culture.) But you don't win wars by being saint-like. In a more one-sided war (like Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan), it is the moral duty of the much superior force to be humane, but in the middle of WWII the victor was anything but assured.
Concepts like "rules of war" and "terrorism" are shams. There is no line in the sand you can draw, no action that is absolutely unjustified if we're talking about the fate of millions or billions of lives. That doesn't mean we're no better than the terrorists, or that there is no right or wrong. Far from it, it means that we simply need to hate and fight them for what they are--closed minded religious bigots whom cannot peacefully co-exist with other ideologies. That is all.
On September 11, they attacked our financial infrastructure and our military headquarters. Considering that they are by far the underdogs, this is (and I urge mods to wait and read and think before doing anything rash) a perfectly acceptable guerrilla tactic for a group so hopelessly out-gunned.
The TACTIC is valid; their REASONS are utter bullshit and that is why we should wipe them off the face of the Earth.
(To even come close to justifying that level of extreme violence, we'd need to do something insanely evil, not just stick up for Israel in the UN and maintain a military base in Saudi Arabia.)
I worry desperately when people say that killing civilians or causing terror is wrong 100% of the time, except for when we vaporize a few hundred thousand civilians but that's ok because of reasons XYZ. It's ok to admit that anything goes in war. Doing so does not legitimize your opponent in the least, because at the end of the day you are fighting for the rights and ideologies and ways of life that will live long after the dead are put in ground. You must always seek to justify your actions (or rather, you must always seek to act justly) , but no single action is inherently unjustifiable.
Just so you know, I happen to think that Hiroshima was justified, Nagasaki wasn't, Afghanistan was justified, and Iraq wasn't, but the point is the criteria you use, not the judgment itself. If you're not consistent in your criteria, don't be surprised when no one takes your own personal "axis of evil" seriously.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption, you may now resume dredging up every questionable action from the United States' and Japan's history.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:4, Insightful)
From the minutes of the Target Committee Meeting of May 10-11, 1945:
Hiroshima was selected because of the depot, because of the industrial area (which included military manufacturing), and to see how the hills would reflect the explosion.
Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list. He accepted that civilian losses would be there; his speech stated as much when he said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port.
There is no debate that Japan was not in fighting shape anymore. The Potsdam Declaration (which demanded the disarming of Japan, the dismantling of war industries, the occupation of the islands, renouncement of territorial claims outside of the home islands, institution of a new government, handing over war criminals, and the occupation of Japan until such time as the above conditions were met, under pain of "total destruction", and there would be no negotiations) admitted as much. But the first reaction to the Declaration by the Japanese was to not comment (specifically, "mokusatsu" which may have been misinterpreted as intentionally refusing comment).
Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender? If they had, I've not been able to find anything solid on it. The only terms that I've found commonly suggested centered around keeping the emperor, having no foreign occupiers, and trying their own war criminals. These weren't going to go over well with the exception of keeping the emperor, because there was a severe lack of trust of the Japanese to follow through on their own and not rearm. The emperor had seen enough by this point, and was re-asserting himself to demand the end of the war, but this wasn't coming around fast enough because he still didn't have enough power. After the first bombing, no surrender announcement was made, and even after Nagasaki was hit, it still took four days of internal bickering before the emperor could come out and announce the surrender.
As for the losses, an invasion force of some 650,000 was being prepared. Okinawa had involved some 300,000 Allied troops and took nearly 50,000 casualties, one of four of which were deaths. More than 110,000 Japanese were dead, making for about a 9:1 kill ratio. Had similar rations occurred in a mainland invasion, it would have involve more than 100,000 casualties with 27,000 dead on the US side alone, and a quarter-million dead Japanese. However, the closer to the home islands the fighting got, the more extreme the Japanese became in their defensive efforts, and it's likely that the fighting would have been even more fierce, with losses even higher, because cities would be bombed prior to troop arrival, and it wasn't hard to kill tens of thousands with one raid.
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest fear on this front is that the neocons in the Bush administration either learned to well or not well enough what nuclear weapons mean in tactical and strategic situations.
The biggest problem with nukes are they are a weapon no one in their right mind will ever use so vast sums have been squandered on them and they are really useless. Sure they prevented a direct confrontation between the superpowers but there have been so many proxy wars between them that they really haven't stopped much in the way of wars.
The neocons are actively working to solve this problem by developing new low yield tactical nukes that they apparently fully intend to use for cave and bunker busting, unless someone like Congress stops them. If they get their way they are going to build them and then they are going to test them at which point the nuclear test ban treaty is out the window and every country outside the U.S. will start abandoning non proliferation because the U.S. will at that point be returning to a proliferation track.
The worst danger of these tactical nukes is they are being built to use, not to sit on the shelf as deterrents. They are low yield and the claim at least is they will only be used on cave complexes and deep underground bunkers. But once they let that genie out of the bottle, and step on the slippery slope we could easily see what was planned for nukes in the 50's, tactical use on the battlefield. Then its anyones guess if this will lead to escalations either small or massive. First the U.S. uses one on a cave complex in Afghanistan then maybe Russia uses one in Chechnya and we are back to a very dangerous world.
"A generation now are being raised where full scale war between first world countries is a thing of the past"
Not sure I would go that far. The people at the time thought World War I would be the war to end all wars and they were wrong.
Nuclear weapons are proliferating at such a high rate its nearly inevitable they are going to end up in the hands of someone who will be willing to use them due to desperation or psychosis.
After the psychotic neocons and their new tactical nukes, Pakistan is the country most likely in my book to use them. That country is extraordinarily unstable and you mix in nukes it is extraordinarily dangerous. There is a military dictator attempting to enforce stability, but he has been targeted by several assassination attempts. He has next to no control over his own secret service, the ISI, and they were instrumental in installing and keeping the Taliban in power in Afghanistan and may well be harboring the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan. And there is a huge fundamentalist Islamic movement that may well gain power someday. Pakistan was also shopping nukes to the highest bidder until very recently. The ring was supposedly broken up but the ringleader A.Q. Khan went unpunished by Pakistan.
We have not yet a seen a case where a country with nukes has undergone a violent coup. The Soviet Union and Russia came close once but the people controlling the nukes mostly kept their cool during that one.
Re:No, we haven't learned (Score:1, Insightful)
Think some more.
Re:No, we haven't learned (Score:3, Insightful)
I could hardly imagine a worse idea. For two reasons: first, it would risks the demonstrative effects of the bomb, and second, it would be the ugliest, most barbaric act comitted by mankind against the planet.
Suppose the bomb had blown the top off the mountain. Impressive in terms of explosive power, but it would not have had the horrible effects of human destruction - burning skin, instant vaporization - that served to shock the nation into surrender. For a "non-destructive" demonstration, Tokyo Bay, as proposed, would have had more effect. More people would have seen it immediately.
A low-level blast planned to create the maximum visual scarring of Mount Fuji would have also kicked up an enormous amount of fallout, and the long-term fatalities would probably have been very high, though the immediate deaths would have been reduced. Of course, part of our ignorance at that time included ignorance of radiation sickness and fallout.
So then, and assuming things then went as they did in fact with the Japanese population being open and accepting to the occupation, the numbers and time scale of subsequent deaths would have been much greater than Hiroshima. In effect, it would be the killing, by radiation poisoning, of all those people who had survived the war, accepted the surrender and occupation, and were by then supposedly allies.
Worst of all, in my opinion, it would have been a horrible, ugly act against the planet and everyone who lives on it. The U.S. was willing to spare Kyoto for the sake of its cultural heritage. To destroy a true natural wonder, the most perfectly-formed conical volcano in the world, by human aggression would be something that we could never live down. We couldn't ever rebuild Mt. Fuji. And suppose things went a bit differently and Japan eventually became a U.S. territory. Then, whose mountain would have been destroyed?
Every August 6, we can contemplate the effects of the A-bombing, and the monuments will always be there in Hiroshima. It's part of history, in its own time and place. But would you want to see a scarred, radioactive symbol of human destruction every time you walk to the train station?
Re:So should you. (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that the Japanese army and its militaristic leadership committed atrocities doesn't damn to hell every citizen of Japan. Most of them didn't really have anything to say about it, they didn't even get to vote on it. Even the people who did support everything the Japanese military did were for the most part propagandized and brain washed to the point they couldn't differentiate the rightness and wrongness. Anyone who did stand up against it most assuredly would have just got whacked.
Its about like me saying you should be held personally responsible because the Bush administration launched the war in Iraq and American soldiers tortured prisoners in Abu Graib. Well if you voted for him both before and after you are responsible but all of us who voted against him aren't.
I personally would prefer to not be incinerated or brought up on war crimes charges because a government and a military over which I have no control commits war crimes.
Re:No, we haven't learned (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire world understood what had happened - Truman announced it in a public address 16 hours afterwards. The Japanese got a first-hand report when they sent an official by plane to see why the telegraph signals from Hiroshima had stopped. Combine that with the radar reports which showed just 1-3 planes (the air raid sirens were turned on, but were shut down when the small number of planes seemed to indicate a reconaissance mission). It doesn't take a genius to figure out the U.S. really did a new weapon where a single plane could wipe out a city.
I'm basically convinced that we wanted to study the effects on real targets, and also implicitly threaten Stalin, and those factors were used to justify the targeting. We hated the Japanese enough to consider their use as human Guinnea pigs to be a trivial aspect.
Decisions are rarely, if ever, made based on a single factor. A good sign of a revisionist is that he'll take a complex decision with multiple difficult factors - some sincere and some not so sincere, choose the ones which best support his position, and emphasize those factors above all else.
Yes I'm sure the opportunity for experimentation on "live" subjects was part of the decision. But there was a war going on. It's silly to claim that experimentation was the prevailing reason for bombing Hiroshima when the U.S. was already bombing Japanese cities almost daily. Was the U.S. bombing the other cities for experimentation purposes too? No, they were bombing the other cities to try to win the war. And they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to win the war.
WWII killed over 50 million people. That's an average of over 20,000 a day. While the deaths of the quarter million who died from the atomic bombings were sad, they were just par for the course at the time.
However, looking at the state of the world today, it doesn't seem like we learned much by it. At least nothing important.
How do you figure that? Nuclear weapons have never been used again, and are universally considered the greatest threat to our survival as a species. I'd say we learned pretty well the lesson from it. The only reason we keep building 'em is a lack of trust. And lack of trust has been a human failing since the first caveman stole another caveman's dinner.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:1, Insightful)
But you can't make it liberal with spin, because liberal == true, objective, and good.
Re:Sympathy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Man we are sooooooo much morally superior to the japanese now. They raped people!.
Revisionist Idiocy (Score:2, Insightful)
Japanese strategy since at least Midway and certainly Marianas was to inflict enough casualties on the US, so that it could keep most if not all of it's gains, including China, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, and the Philippines. As the US island hopped ever closer, the battles got bloodier and resistance more suicidally fanatic. Tarawa, Tinian, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and worst of all Okinawa, all took a terrible toll.
Japanese strategy was to make any invasion of the home islands even bloodier than Okinawa. On Okinawa there were 50,000 Americans dead or wounded, including 22,000 KIA, 5,000 of them sailors. Over 300 ships were attacked by kamikazes operating from Japan, with more than 30 sunk. Two Aircraft carriers were so seriously damaged that they were no longer functional. Over 110,000 Japanese soldiers were killed, and only a paltry 5,000 surrendered, most of them wounded and delirious. An additional 100,000 Okinawan civilians died in the fighting. The fighting itself raged from March until June, 1945.
This is what Japanese war-planners hoped to inflict on Americans, to keep at least Manchuria, along with Southeast Asia. Note that fighting in the Philippines continued right up to the surrender.
Japan was beaten, there was no way it could eke out a victory, it's air defenses were shattered, it's Navy no longer in existence, much of it's Army in China, and massive 1,000 plane air-raids by Curtis LeMay such as the March 1945 Tokyo firebombing had killed over 100,000 people. Fighting after March 1945 was no longer rational but it continued any way in the hope that "enough" US casualties would cause the US to simply back away and leave Japan with it's war gains and keep the militarists in power.
In response to this the War Dept presented Truman with three plans:
*The Navy's plan, continue a total blockade of the Home Islands, with continued fighting in Philippines, China, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, until at least 1947. It was accepted that all 25,000 or so Allied POWs would perish in this starvation strategy and that US casualties would mount into the 200,000 range as major operations continued in the Philippines and action in China was contemplated.
Truman rejected this plan.
*The Army Air Force's plan, under LeMay, was to gather all the B-17 and B-24 bombers from the European Theatre and conduct not 1,000 plane raids but massive 10,000 Plane Raids all over Japan. LeMay believed he would kill on the order of a million to two million Japanese in the inevitable area bombing of Japan's largely dispersed cottage war industries (with conventional bombs) and thus force a surrender. The War however could have continued for another year well into 1946. With again, fighting and dying in other fronts.
Truman rejected this plan.
*The Army had a plan which called for the invasions of Kyushu and Honshu (Olympic and Coronet respectively), the Japanese had clearly anticipated these invasion sites and had a one-to-one match with invading forces prepared with dug in Imperial troops in fortified defenses that had killed so many in Okinawa and Iwo Jima (3-1 advantage for the invader was the measure of invasion success in that time). In addition an astounding 10,000 kamikazes were readied, and the entire civilian population mobilized to fight the invaders (MacArthur simply ignored the "Magic" radio intercept evidence that the Japanese prepared for the invasion, the Navy was on the verge of withdrawing support for the plan as a consequence).
Truman had tentatively endorsed this plan, which projected 100,000 to 200,000 dead, subject to unanimous War Dept approval which was collapsing with Admiral King on the verge of bailing on the plan from the codename "Magic" radio intercepts. Far from being pulled out of the air as the LAT lamely asserts, War Dept planners based this on OKINAWA and if anything they were conservative. Area bombing of Le Havre on the day after D-Day k
Re:What God will say to them (Score:4, Insightful)
"Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list."
Tokyo was pretty much decimated because of the fire-bombings. If it had not been for that it too would not have been "purely civilian". I don't know how much more of a pure civilian target you can get than dropping a nuclear warhead in the center of a large populated city consisting mostly of civilians.
Let's take a look at more of the radio adress by Truman.
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost."
This seems almost to suggest that the attack on Hiroshima was almost purely against a military target, and "thousands" of lives hadn't already been lost. Certainly seems to downplay the attack in my view.
"Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port."
Why not just attack the military targets in these two cities? Nuclear bombing was for the purpose of destroying the military targets? It most certainly was not military targets that the bombs were needed for. It was an attack on civilian populations, (and if the officially stated reasons are the only ones), an attack to frighten and terrorize the Japanese into submission through it's sheer devestation to entire cities, not as an attack on valid military targets to stop the military.
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
So those who do not follow the rules of war, need to have nuclear weapons dropped on their civilians? That is part of the justification? Surely "intentional" killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, for any reason, is against what anyone would consider the rules of war. But it is justified because the other side did bad things? If we care so much about the rules of war, and treating soldiers, as well as civilians decently, we would not have to stoop to such tactics.
"Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender?"
Secretary Togo was talking to the USSR, the only major nation they were still at peace with, in order to act as an intermediary with the USA. The US, having cracked the Japanese codes, was aware of this and learned of it prior to Potsdam. Efforts were being made by the new civilian government of Japan, (Tojo and the power structure had resigned in shame), to end the war and negotiate a settlement with the USA, and to ensure the survival of the Emperor, which was the paramount concern. Negotiations were certainly being considered throughout the entire war. The plan of Japan's attack on the USA was to destroy the Pacific fleet in order to entirely eliminate the US presence in the region, thereby allowing the Japanese to take the Dutch East Indies, and the oil and rubber resources in the region, which they were in need of for their aggression in the rest of the Pacific Theater. After eliminating the US pacific fleet, they would then sue for peace with the US in order to avoid having to go to war with them on a massive scale, which they knew they could not win. This is very well established as being their strategy, and not just among cracy hippie professors.
Oddly. (Score:1, Insightful)
I understand one's desire to excuse the transgressions of one's own country, since, I'm Irish and it's quite common in Ireland for Republicans and Unionists to pardon their own atrocities, whilst reriding the other side. In reality though, the use of Nuclear weapons on a "city" not a "military target" but a "city", which resulted in some 140,000 thousand people dead is, at best mass murder and probably genocide.
Also, speaking of the supposedly "acceptable" tatical Nuclear weapons Richard Pearl and Dick Cheney want to drop on people... I'd like to that the fundamentalist Christians who keep voting Republican, for bringing their right wing religous war to the world.
WMD ? Yeah... and George Bush has them all !
Re:Actually, I live in Japan (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, we also have the right to choose not to vote unlike in some "democracies" where 100% of the votes cast are for a single candidate.
First, I never said the US was a '"true" democracy' - no countries are as a matter of fact, only briefly during direct elections. Second, in Denmark you also have the right not to vote, but around 90 percent of the people still choose to vote on one of the seven parties in the Danish parliament. My point was that when less than half the people in a country, that claims to uphold certain democratic values, vote, then I would say, that that country has a democratic problem - no matter the reason for the low voting percentage. One problem might be that many Americans don't know who to vote for - given the fact, that there are only two parties to choose from. Another issue could be the tiresome process of registering as a voter. I don't know, but I do find it ironic, that the US is trying to install new democracies all over the globe, when their own political system could use a thorough check-up.
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The whole point of developing smart bombs is to try to minimize civilian casualties"
Smart bombs were developed because they allow you to take out targets like bridges and bunkers with fewer aircraft placed at risk and a higher probability of success. Bombing bridges with dumb bombs was nearly impossible. Reduction in civilian causalties was at best a pleasant side effect but had nothing to do with the rationale for developing them. Stop kidding yourself and trying to kid me. The U.S. still uses B-52's to carpet bomb when it suits them.
Smart weapons probably wouldn't have changed the dynamic behind fire bombing Japanese cities. The objective was to totally destroy the cities and kill all the civilians in them in an attempt to break the enemies will.
"Now imagine if that bomb had been a nuke, or a tac nuke."
Wont have to much longer. The Bush is doing their best to start development, deployment and use of a new generation of tactical nukes. They wont be used on bridges probably but will be on bunkers and cave complexes unless someone stops them. If their is a bunker in the middle of a city they want to take out bad enough, you will almost certainly see detonation of tactical nukes in cities in the future, by the U.S. In Iraq they blew up underground bunkers on vague suspicion Saddam was in them, he wasn't and they mostly just killed civilians in the apartments and houses over where they thought he was. Imagine when they use tacitcal nukes for this role in the future.
"Civilian casualties are not something Americans like. It's political suicide for politicians -- hence the focus on smart bombs."
There was still an abundance of civilian casualties during the invasion of Iraq. Yes they are a political problem. The U.S. solved this problem by preventing any counting of them or anyone showing any video of them. One of Al Jazeera's main offenses during the invasion, for which their headquarters was bombed, and journalists killed was they showed uncensored video of some of the dead women and children.
I could make an argument that smart bombs made things more dangerous not less. They've kidded the upper end of the command chain, and the American public, that they can fight clean, surgical wars with impunity. The end result is a much higher willingness to wage wars. Even with smart weapons they are still brutal, ugly affairs and civilians still get killed. GI'S still panic and hose down cars because full of women and children because they are jumpy about car bombs, or tanks still flatten houses in places like Fallujah. Those are old fashioned ways to kill civilians, no smart weapons in sight.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:2, Insightful)
> the Empire of Japan could have been brought about
Oh, yeah, sure. Eventually. Bear in mind, before the A-bombs were dropped, the US had already turned things around and was gaining ground continually. The US was winning -- gradually. But it was taking a long time. In other words, the atomic bomb did not change the *outcome* of the war (in the broad overall big-picture sense of outcome); what it changed primarily was the *duration* of the war.
Frankly, the US would have won even if Japan had the atomic bomb and the US did not; the outcome was determined by other factors, mainly infrastructure and production capacity and logistical issues. Before the atomic bomb was dropped, the US had already flown a plane over the Japanese capital city of Tokyo on at least one occasion. Japan could not put a plane over or anywhere near Washington D.C. at any time during the war, because there was an entire and rather sizeable continent in the way, controlled substantially by the US (and its allies, e.g., Canada would not have likely allowed a Japanese plane through their airspace either, even assuming a plane existed in that era that could fly that far without landing, which I think was not the case). Japan couldn't put planes over *most* US cities, not even if they could park an aircraft carrier in San Francisco harbor. They couldn't go through Panama, because the US controlled it (and anyway, it would be an unacceptably narrow chokepoint); they didn't have the submarines to go under the north polar cap (nobody did at the time), and Cape Horn (let alone going west and clear around) is so far out of the way as to create very severe supply-line problems. (Also, the British controlled the Falklands and might have had something to say about Japanese ships coming into the Atlantic that way; the allies also controlled the Suez, which leaves the route round the south of Africa, the longest route of all, completely untenable from a supply-line perspective. In short, Japan couldn't put ships in the Atlantic.)
But more than just geography, production capacity and infrastructure were in the way. After Pearl Harbor, Japan had a larger navy than the US. By the time the bomb was dropped, the US had a larger navy than Japan had had at any time during the war. How did that happen? Simple: the US could *build* a navy much faster; the US had more shipyards, more steel mills -- in short, more infrastructure. The US also had more domestic transportation and communications infrastructure, more munitions factories, more weapons factories, more *other* factories that could be converted if necessary, and more ecconomic resources (just compare the GDP of the two countries at that point in history). And if new technology was going to be developed that would impact the outcome, the US also had more universities and more research labs and every other relevant thing. And it isn't just that the US had more of those things because it was bigger; it *was* bigger, but also it was a first-world country, and Japan at the time was not; the US had much more infrastructure per capita, in addition to being rather larger.
Basically, Japan was seriously outclassed in this war. If Japan hadn't brought the US into the war by attacking first, it wouldn't have been anywhere near fair for the US to fight them (but fair sort of goes out the window when somebody attacks you).
Whether the US would have entered the war if Pearl Harbor had not been attacked is an interesting discussion, but even if they had, it is likely that Germany would have been the main focus, and Japan may have been left more-or-less alone. The Japanese leadership miscalculated this rather badly, because they did not have a good understanding of American culture and psychology, thus leading them to conclude, quite erroneously, that attacking would be a good way to keep the US out of the war, or reduce the US to a non-factor in the war's outcome. That didn't work out _quite_