Posted on 08/06/2012 6:08:40 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a "conventional" bombing of Japan was underway, "Little Boy," (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets' plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets' B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, "Little Boy" was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read "Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis" (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).
There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying.
According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.
There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, "It's pretty terrific. What a relief it worked."
From what I’ve read (knowing there at lots of stories about this), some didn’t believe that it was one bomb because the devastation was too great. I do remember one passage in a book that wrote that the Japanese government’s press release contained an understatement that would have made any Brit proud when it claimed that “some incendiary bombs were dropped on Hiroshima.”
There is a lot of fault that should land on the Japanese for their role in WWII and all the atrocities they committed, but the second bomb may have convinced more of the public and the military to end the war. I wouldn’t place it all on the emperor.
Thank God he ordered the stoppage of war after Nagasaki. If he hadn’t, the war would have lasted much longer, because we didn’t have another bomb. In this scenario, the Emperor saved a lot of lives.
Just food for thought....
日本 ピング (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list)
Enola Gay is flush with pride at her little boy in that picture.
“U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference’s demand for unconditional surrender . . . “
Have we ever, since then, even once been in a position to make a “demand for unconditional surrender”? Have we even declared a war since then?
Now we’re to the point of not even naming the enemy (except returning vet domestic terrorists), and letting them infiltrate our administration and its evolving police state.
Russia invading Japan scared us, too. Imagine Japan and China and Korea all Red.
The emperor was willing to throw in the towel after Hiroshima. Of course, he was a figurehead and the decision among the military dictatorship was split. Remember, the sharper cookies in the military, especially Admiral Yamamoto, were gone by this time.
The compromise decision after Hiroshima was to send a cable to the USSR (the designated neutral intermediary) for delivery to America accepting unconditional surrender terms but proposing a meeting at America's earliest convenience to work out the details. For those familiar with Japanese culture, this was pretty much the best outcome we could expect under the circumstances.
The USSR, of course, did not deliver the cable immediately. In fact, they used it as an opportunity to invade Japanese territory in the Kuriles, Sakhalin, Manchuria and Korea. Other than the hot battle of Shumshu in the Kuriles, the Japanese offered only token resistance.
The key long-term results were Russian occupation of Japanese territory which continues to this day and capture of weaponry which was turned over to Mao's army for use in the Chinese civil war which broke out some three years later and brought the communist regime to power.
By the time the Japanese military realized they had been had, of course, the bomb in Nagasaki dropped. The emperor himself intervened and insisted acceptance of the unconditional surrender be communicated to the Americans directly and without further delay. Other than a few diehards (which produce the most action in the film), the military agrees.
The idea that the emperor was stubborn to the point of national suicide or that most of the military was even close to intransigent after Hiroshima is a total baseless fallacy.
Yes. The Nagasaki bomb exploded between the Mitsubishi steel & armament works and the Mitsubishi torpedo works, demolishing both. A picture of an unfinished torpedo sitting in it's cradle in the devastated factory, with the roof blown off, is not one of the more popular shots of the atomic bombings. I guess it's not kumbaya enough.
Hiroshima is the more popular narrative, as everyone plays the city out to be an innocent maiden. Hiroshima was actually an army garrison town and shipping port.
Dropping the bombs, both of them, absolutely had to be done to end the war. Anyone with any doubts should read Richard Frank’s “Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.”
The situation was that the Japanese leadership was determined to continue the war even though they had clearly been beaten. There was no real “peace movement” inside the Japanese government. The “peace feelers” supposedly being sent to the USSR were not official government spokesmen, but were functionaries in the Foreign Ministry acting without authority of the government, and had no official terms to offer. To the extent there were any terms being contemplated, they were completely unrealistic as they called for Japan to retain their overseas conquests that they still occupied. The actual texts of the cables between the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and the ambassador in Moscow would be laughable if the situation were not so serious. Finally on that regard, we were intercepting and decoding these messages, and knew there was no legitimate peace movement in Tokyo.
The second argument Frank makes is that the invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath, both for the Americans and Japanese, and all of this is well documented. Most American leaders did not want this to happen, for obvious reasons.
The final point Frank makes is that ironically, the bombs saved Japanese lives; literally millions of them. The American air, naval and submarine war against Japan had succeeded in full measure. The home islands of Japan had been completely shut off from any meaningful imports, not only of war material, but also of basic items such as food and coal. Japan could not produce enough food to feed their population, and none was getting through. In addition, there would be no coal for heating come winter. The food ration had already been reduced below necessary minimums by July, it would only have gotten worse in a cold winter. In addition to sealing off all external imports, Japan’s internal economic infrastructure had been destroyed or was going to be within a matter of weeks. In addition to burning out the heart of her cities, mining campaigns had shut off the internal maritime trade, and the rail links were easily severed by bombing.
Had the war continued through the winter, it is probable that millions of Japanese would have starved to death. Think of Leningrad on a national scale. And the deaths would have been proportionally greatest among the non-combatants: elderly, women, children and sick.
It may sound harsh, but we actually did them a favor by dropping the bombs.
We have not made Purple Heart medals in 60 years. The ones we have been awarding to the wounded since then were made for the expected losses from the invasion of Honshu. We had also underestimated the size of the home defenders by two Divisions.
two bombs weren’t enough....remember Pearl Harbor..the Bataan death march and more...
As we learned from the battles of Okinawa and Saipan that the civilians were willing to kill themselves rather than surrender.
Yes,it did.Regardless of what Western leftists or Japanese nationalists might say to the contrary.Those bombs saved the lives of (at least) hundreds of thousands of Allied troops and even more Japanese troops and civilians.
I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Hiroshima with friends. I visited the “A Bomb” building - walked all around it. I was told that they maintain it exactly as it was after the bomb dropped. I stood right at ground zero. There’s a Buddhist temple there. Snuck some ground zero dirt home in a film can.
Good day, FRiend. My father enlisted in the Navy as a 17 YO, and was training for the invasion of Japan.
Truman made the right call, and not just for the US.
Thanks for the thoughtful, informative reply.
Before my father died, I had talked to him about the war. As the reports of Japanese atrocities poured in, people learned of more deaths of our soldiers. Every neighborhood was affected, nearly every family. Many friends had died. Our nation was tired of the killing.
The bombs ended it. We need no further justification.
Please tell your Dad that I've just given him a smart salute...even though he was an enlisted man (as was I)!
Box set with over 100 Cold War songs and over 2 dozen Public Service Announcements (voiced by Groucho Marx, Bob Hope, Pat Boone, Johnny Cash and others). Artists on this set who sing about the Bomb and the Red Scare include Bill Haley and His Comets, The Louvin Brothers, Marty Robbins, Wanda Jackson, The Goldwaters, Janet Greene, Dr. Strangelove and the Fallouts, and many others. This also has 2 unintentionally hilarious full-length spoken word civil defense 'scare' LPs: 'If The Bomb Falls' and 'The Complacent Americans. ' A DVD of 9 bizarre civil defense and anti-Communist short films from the '50s and '60s is also included.
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