Posted on 08/06/2022 6:45:11 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The Americans bent over backward to warn the Japanese about the coming bomb, and in fact accelerated conventional bombing of Japanese cities with incendiary bombs to exceed the anticipated losses when the nuclear bombs were used.
So, apart from the contamination aspect, the nuclear bombs caused far less loss of life and limb than did the 1-2 month conventional-incendiary-bombing runup to the August 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Accompanying the conventional bombing during the runup were repeated diplomatic appeals to the Japanese leadership, and lots of leaflet drops explaining to the people what was going to happen.
You could tell when reading these NYT articles through the 'retrospectoscope' that the US government was anticipating the chest-beating, hair-pulling and guilt-tripping to occur in the future United States over using the nuclear bombs.
The result was that the bombs were spectacular and could not be hidden or minimized by Japan or the rest of the world.
It induced them to surrender, and anyone's estimate would reveal that it saved lives starting almost immediately, IMHO.
If the nuclear bombs had not been used, even a few more days' conventional incendiary bombing (not to mention any attempt at invasion of the mainland) would have resulted in many more excess deaths.
The nuclear bombs saved many, many lives, and bitch-slapped the Japanese into a state of sanity that led them to surrender and begin living peacefully.
The proof of all this is: Look at Japan today.
False. That is exactly what everybody in the US high command and in Washington DC though - correctly as it turned out. They knew their enemy and they knew nothing but the most severe of blows was going to cause them to surrender.
It took them being utterly devastated, their fleet sunk, a tight naval blockade imposed, their largest 60 cities being mostly burned to the ground, millions of their people dead, AND STILL it took two nukes AND the Soviets jumping into the war for them to finally surrender and even then the military tried to stage a coup to prevent it. The Allies knew the enemy they were dealing with.
Alan Alda became a star
Totally blockading Japan and waiting for them to surrender due to starvation would have taken who-knows-how-long, and meanwhile you are still losing people. Additionally, the Japanese still had over one million troops throughput China and great Asia. We had to force their surrender.
For all that Japan has accomplished since they surrendered, they have never really fully acknowledged their total destruction and horror they released on Asia and US. Why they still get away with it is beyond me.
There were instances of Japanese enlisted trying to surrender. In many cases their officers shot them.
Easy. We wanted to win the peace, as well as the war.
Paul Tibbetts never carried a grudge. He drove a Toyota later in life.
Korean - Japanese animosity predates the Second World War by centuries.
That's an excellent question and one I've asked before.
War is a brutal numbers game. Using the bombs was likely going to result in the lowest overall death toll and that's exactly what happened. I won't say it wasn't awful, but so is just about every other act of war. eg, its awful to stick your bayonet into some 18 year old kid's belly and watch him scream in pain and die in agony. The bombs were necessary and they ultimately saved a lot of lives. As such, using them was the moral thing to do.
The Japanese civilians in such a scenario wouldnt even need to be combatants. See the Battle for Manila - a bloody nightmare for civilians caught between two combatants. Invasion of Japan would’ve made that look like a quick skirmish.
War is hell, and there will always be civilian casualties.
Considering what Japan did to POWs and to civilians throughout China and other nations, they are lucky they were not nuked into oblivion.
Yup,don’t make us angry.
You won’t like us when we’re angry.
As Paul Tibbetts said, they never had their balls on the anvil.
The thing is it took two nukes to get them to surrender!
And some of them still didn’t want to surrender.🙄
Yup this.
Yes, the Japanese even massacred Koreans after the 1923 Kanto earthquake that hit Yokohama and Tokyo. Rumors of Korean prisoners escaping reached receptive minds among the citizenry, and in a few days, thousands of Koreans had been murdered.
Japan had occupied Korea in 1895, made it a protectorate, used Koreans for a cheap labor force (resulting in additional resentment from Japanese). The deposed Korean emperor died in 1919, and after that the Koreans were more politicized, and the Japanese were more paranoid. One Korean lobbed a bomb at Korea’s Japanese governor, and the Japanese concluded no Korean anywhere was to be trusted — all were insurrectionists at heart. After the quake, anyone caught mispronouncing Japanese with a Korean accent was likely to meet a horrible death. Talk of looting, arson, well poisoning, etc. was everywhere. Hundreds of Koreans (sometimes hundreds at a time) were shot, drowned, deliberately burned alive, in the aftermath of the quake.
Sanity was never fully restored. Survivors remember long.
😁
And if they had,Japan would be a radioactive wasteland now.🙄
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