Posted on 08/15/2015 11:52:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A week after Nagasaki, Tokyo had still not surrendered. A third weapon was already on its way and a dozen were to follow.
LONDON — American military archives reveal that if the Japanese had not surrendered on August 15, 1945, they would have been hit by a third and potentially more powerful atomic bomb just a few days later and then, eventually, an additional barrage of up to 12 further nuclear attacks.
Documents highlighted during commemorations to mark the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, and Nagasaki on August 9, which forced the end of World War II, show the determination of the United States to make Japan surrender unconditionally.
In the spring of 1945, the U.S. Army set up a special target committee to debate key Japanese cities to attack as officials believed their regime had already made it perfectly clear they were not willing to surrender at any price.
Confidential reports added that “even after two atom bombs, they preferred to fight on till they are all dead. Death or glory.”
It was a belief shared by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who attended talks with Allied leaders Harry S. Truman, the new American president, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at Potsdam in July 1945, where he gave consent to using atomic weapons following the successful “Trinity” test.
“There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table,” Truman later admitted in his memoirs. “Never did I hear the slightest suggestion that we do otherwise.”
There was no reference though to the number of bombs under consideration, although Churchill casually initialed a minute telling U.K. officials to go along with what the Americans decided....
(Excerpt) Read more at thedailybeast.com ...
It was a savage, total war. People forget that these days.
Back when people knew the stakes.
I question this. I was under the impression it was a year or two before the US had even enough fissile material for one more bomb, let alone a dozen.
I always heard we only had the 2 bombs at the time.
Apparently there were at least 4.
Yeah - that, and the difference between men and women.
Well, and those are only two of the many possible permutations.
If the Japanese had developed the atom bomb first, they would have continued using them even after we surrendered. Did surrendering prevent American and British troops from getting killed by their Japanese captors?
How much better is it to be spuriously assigned blame for what you did not do than for what you did do? Aren’t we lucky to be in such an esteemed position?
The US had nowhere near enough fissionable material for a dozen more bombs in August 1945. We could have, would have and of course DID produce same over time. Not, however, 3 days apart.
I read the declassified minutes of a meeting between Truman and General Groves a couple of years back. The US was ready to start series production of the bombs in September, 1945 at a rate of almost five every two months.
No. For the purpose of fighting a war, there's just two - Male and female, that's it.
See? You just lost WWII.
I’ve heard the same. I am skeptical on this one
Conventional firepower would not have pushed the emperor to have the “Ningen Sengen” written.
If you were eighteen when Pearl Harbor occurred....you had a clear and obvious opinion over Japan....which is 180-degrees different from what people might think today.
If you stood there in December of 1944 and looking ahead at both the European and Pacific war....you’d be shaking your head. Nothing was guaranteed for 1945 to be the end of the war. The casualty count on both sides of the war for the Americans was significant. Both the Japanese and Germans were working on their own nukes and it was simply a question of who would reach an end-point first.
I took WWII as an history elective in college as it was a big interest of my father's that he impressed on me, he and his three siblings were all enlisted or drafted in WW II (yes for the US , for any smart-ass’s), one died fighting the Germans
No one seriously debates this today. Libs bring it up recently just to attack Israel.
Most Americans know little of US history and certainly not this.
Indeed, perspective is very important. Most of the libs I have discussed this matter with have never worn a uniform, much less gotten shot at. Such elite people would never lower themselves as to serve in the armed forces. They were much better than that!
I disagree. He would have thrown in the towel eventually. But the cost would have been enormous on both sides.
He would have gone down as some kind of martyr rather than declared his humanity, probably. That’s why I mentioned the Ningen Sengen—the use of atomic weapons was the only thing that could impress upon him that he wasn’t a god.
I HATE when I do that!
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