Posted on 08/02/2014 8:08:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
Japan had no capability to mount an amphibious assault against US military installations or the mainland or even Alaska at the point of Okinawa.
It was all over, but the Japanese war lords would not recommend surrender yet.
There was no urgency to any ground invasion.
Japan could have been blockaded at that point and the rest of its air forces and naval forces destroyed.
The ground forces still on islands could have been starved out by blockade over the years, with selective air attacks as opportunities arose.
It would have been long-term but very inexpensive, especially in terms of American lives.
It's August 2nd of 1945. What facts in place at the time (and I'll give a wide degree of latitude here to include anything from a well-documented historical record as a "fact") made it absolutely imperative for the U.S. to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities at that point in time?
An analysis based on the presumption that "I must do X to you because the only alternative I have is to accept Y" is a poor line of thought here in a military conflict at that particular juncture.
Funny how that didn't prove to be true in the least in Iwo Jima, Peleliu or Okinawa.
They probably don’t even know about the firebombing of Japan’s cities.
Some of us grew up surrounded by the vets of WWII and we tend to take the events of that war as common knowledge. But someone now in college would have been born around the time of the first Gulf War and they weren’t glued to a black and white television watching Victory at Sea.
We already had battleships offshore shelling factories before we dropped the bomb.
They were like a fox in a hole. Simply minimize ground force exposure, drawing them out when possible, otherwise wait them out.
You can always dig out the old Roman methods of siege, i.e., burn them out from the air, etc., if you want to speed things up a bit.
They have already lost, it’s only a matter of time.
There is no sense at all to wasting lives in the process of clearing them out, seeing as how they have arrived at checkmate. They have no resupply, they have no navy, etc. The fat lady is singing at that point.
“Do a bit of research into how far along Germany AND Japan were in developing their own atomic weapons. Rocketry technology was also a factor, since airplanes would not be needed to deliver atomic weaponry. Evidently, your perspective lacks sufficient data to make the assertions you’ve made.”
That was my thought too. Easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback. Much harder to know what the Japanese would have come up with if they had a few more years to work on their hardware. They had spies - they knew, for certain, that nukes were possible - it was only a matter of time before they got something going. And then what...nuking naval formations may have been possible...for starters.
Sorry to the (relative) handful of civilians that got nuked (less than 1% of the total civilian casualties of the war...something never mentioned), but war is war, and don’t expect it to be clean and precise.
It’s sad that some people CANNOT FIGURE THAT OUT.
A comparison to a Roman siege is absurd. It wouldn’t have been the siege of an army it would have been the siege of an entire nation. In the meantime, as their population died from mass starvation and rampant disease, they would have continued work on their own atomic bomb.
So is it your contention we didn't want to end WWII? During that war we did kill the Japanese air force from the prospective of force on force. Since their stocks of aircraft remained, they were compelled to switch to asymmetric warfare and use their aircraft in the kamikaze role.
as ground forces without air defenses are easily destroyed by ground forces with overwhelming supporting air power.
'Easily destroyed', like at Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, where the situation you described existed?
If planes can attack cities, they can attack anti-aircraft positions. They also can attack military air installations.
Which they did btw. The industrial targets that we were after were in cities, or is it your contention that unless one is wearing a uniform, they can't be supporting the war and they can't contribute to the war effort of that country? You really need to take a targeting class. There are many types of legitimate targets. It has only been in the last 20 some years that we could attack individual targets located within civilian populations with a relatively small (2000#) or less payload with any hope of having successful effects on the target and minimizing collateral damage. That is deaths of civilians. The death and destruction of military equipment/personnel is additional damage.
Incorrect.
We’re down to about 1500, courtesy of Obammy.
My only brother was killed in the battle for Okinawa. I was in a line at the quartermaster hut on Leyte getting new equipment for the invasion of Japan expected within a month or so. A lt. came out and told us to go back to our tents because cease fire had been declare after the Japs had the two atomic bombs dropped on them. I knew the invasion was envisioned as very costly in lives especially for the infantry/marine kind of personnel like us. However my brother’s death made me so angry that the chance to kill a few Japs was much on my mind. However the notice of no more fighting took hold and every man at that ‘repo depot’ ,including myself, gave whoops of joy and relief. I did have an interesting encampment on Leyte where we could look across the rice paddies to the mountains and now and then catch sight of a ‘straggler’. One day four of us left our encampment to try and make contact with one. No success but I did come back with a big bunch of so called monkey bananas. I’m glad the bombs were used and paved the way for the war’s end.
“A comparison to a Roman siege is absurd. It wouldn’t have been the siege of an army it would have been the siege of an entire nation. In the meantime, as their population died from mass starvation and rampant disease, they would have continued work on their own atomic bomb.”
I don’t remember much about Canadians fighting in the Pacific. I know that England pulled them into Europe BIG TIME and they fought as bravely as anyone on our side, but I don’t remember much about them in the Pacific - that was our war.
So, perhaps it’s the lack of veterans from the Pacific War up there that gives Canadians a “different perspective” regarding the savagery we were fighting against.
There is plenty to be gained militarily by destroying the factories and workers that produce the bombs,bullets,fuel and equipment,even the food, of the enemy.
Old time navies intercepted and captured or sunk commercial shipping to cripple the enemy economy.Aircraft just extended the reach.
If we must fight then we should fight to win.
And that still didn't convince them.
Agree, good thing that wasn't what this was. Btw between the second bomb and surrender, the USAAF had an 800 plane B-29 raid, the USN was shelling coastal installations and running air ops all over Japan. The history is there, see it with the eyes of the time, not present day ones.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities with military/industrial targets, only fairly recent advances have allowed us to neutralize those types of targets while minimizing collateral damage. Would it have been more palatable for more airmen to have died salving your conscience? I wonder if your prospective might change if it had been you looking through the bomb/gun sight, trying not to be the last American to get killed while we negotiate with fanatics to end the war that was lost but only one side saw it that way.
Mass murder is never right.
'Mass murder'? Says a man from the safety of distance and history with no prospective of the latter or regard for the men who delivered his present to him.
As a matter of fact I favor the overwhelming “scare the livin’ hell out of ‘em” response to attacks on America.
And target in this order:enemy offensive military forces,enemy politicians,enemy defensive forces,transportation,enemy factories producing military goods, enemy power plants,fuel of all types,civilian communications ,food storage and processing and so on until they surrender unconditionally.Germany and japan surrendered unconditionally and were reborn as decent modern nations.All the other halfway wars just perpetuated rotten systems.
GMTA, I hadn’t read your post before I did mine. Three excellent example that stand in the face of sweeping generalizations.
The hell it wasn’t.
After Germany bombed Pearl, Japan then declared war on us.
WTF were suppose to do? Send 250,000 American men to certain death, over their dinky island, that zero resources?
Or maybe we could’ve just kept our embargo on rubber, steel and fuel up hoping for the best?
Skip that.
Should’ve got em in Nam too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.