Posted on 08/06/2022 6:45:11 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Now 88, she is among the few survivors of the horrific attack, which killed around 140,000 people, and is determined to pass on the lessons of history. But Yamada and other survivors fear their voices are not being heard. On the 77th anniversary of the bombing, FRANCE 24 reports on the survivors of the attack.
Bells tolled in Hiroshima on Saturday as the city marked the 77th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945. Her school was just 2.6 kilometres from the epicentre of the attack.
The young girl saw a plane and a flash, then nothing. A tree fell on her, but she survived and found her family. Today, she is determined to keep the painful memories of that fateful day alive.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
Except there was no "unconditional surrender period." That is an utter myth.
At the Japanese's insistence, the Potsdam agreement was rewritten so the nation of Japan was excluded from the terms of surrender. The terms only addressed the surrender of the Japanese military. Not the country or the government.
Japan never surrendered. Period.
The agreement also avoided addressing the Japanese's other "hot button" issue, the disposition of the emperor. Its terms left that decision to discretion of MacArthur. They played "kick the can" with issue of the emperor knowing full well that Mac felt that the maintenance of the emperor was essential to the stability of post-war Japan.
Which was a tacit agreement to accept the Japanese's terms to maintain their emperor.
The claim of "unconditional surrender" is a whitewashing of the Allie's (pragmatic) acquiescing to Japan's terms.
There's nothing "paradoxical" about it. It's been understood for millennia that inflicting the most violence on an enemy in the least possible time tends to save lives on both sides.
MacArthur was 100% right!
War is hell…these weapons ended the war and saved countless deaths and misery on both sides…of course we should be concerned about saving our blood primarily of course…good job USA…
MacArthur knew we had to win the peace. WWI we won the war but lost the peace.
“They aren’t white...They weren’t historically Christian...They were no different than many other Asian cultures in their treatment of foreigners and peasants.”
Pretty condescending.
Counterfactuals are suspect, but can any serious respondent here actually believe that atomic bombs would not have been used against Germany, if they had not surrendered first?
It was just dumb luck that the Third Reich didn’t make atomic bombs first. Their physicists made math errors and concluded that no feasible munition could be developed. By the time they figured it all out, support for R&D had been directed elsewhere.
American development of long-range bombers was centered around the possibility that Britain might fall, necessitating attack from airfields more distant. These efforts preceded formal American involvement: the B-29 program dated to 1939 and ultimately cost more than the Manhattan Project. The B-36 program was approved in 1941.
Thanks Campton.
Remember Pearl Harbor, and Remember the Arizona. My Dad was in the CBI Theater from 1943 to 1945, 14 AAF.
I was just explaining why the Japanese have never been taken to task for their atrocities in the decades leading up to World War II.
They could have used a few Jews.
How many nuclear weapons do you think were simply sitting a shelf in August 1945, simply waiting to be used?
It wasn't about being confident. It was that they knew they were dealing with absolute fanatics. Therefore the most forceful course of action is the only one that even had a chance of making an impression on them.
The lesson is don’t attack other nations.
thanks for the info Friend, things i did not know about.
“...10k’s an impressive number...But there were problems. Maintenance, repairs, material, pilots, technicians, airfields, aviation fuel...Japan was running out of all these. 10k planes shiny new were not inspected, fueled, manned and good to go. “More by October” was imaginary...” [Buttons12, post 129]
I’ve seen numbers above 12,500. Somewhat above round fires of 10,000. What’s more, Allied intel estimates were far lower: 5,000 to 6,000. Being forced to face twice those numbers in actual battle might have stalled the Allied invasion.
Apart from that, your qualifiers have no meaning. They might have been important for an operable air defense, but these were being held back, and hidden from Allied surveillance, for use as suicide bombers. Volunteer pilots were given barely enough training to take off and fly to their targets. Long-term airworthiness and reliability simply weren’t required.
Similarly, production of aircraft for one-time use as suicide strike aircraft was rather simpler than production of more traditionally made warplanes. Formally planned and constructed airfields weren’t needed either.
Trained personnel for manufacturing and servicing aircraft were more of a problem, but the Japanese were moving such facilities to underground locations - about which Allied intel discovered nothing, so air strikes could not have been mounted.
In addition, suicide boats were being prepared. And the general populace was being trained and indoctrinated to perform as individual suicide attackers. Sharpened bamboo stakes were being issued.
It has been a long time since I read the book and I don’t remember a lot of details, but my recollection was not as you portray it. He was President. If he wanted it stopped, he could have stopped it. Even inaction is a decision.
“So it’s not as certain as all that that a Russian invasion even would have reached Japan.”
Well that “brown water fleet” got them to South Sakhalin Island in mid August. Russia still holds that territory.
To the point of the original post for this thread: both bombs were needed, the Japanese understood the massive effort to produce just one bomb and were not convinced we had more than one until the second one was used, then they were unsure how many more we might have.
The Soviet invasion was also crucial, Japan had thought it would take Stalin much longer to amass forces in the Far East and were shocked when he started taking territory so soon.
“...it was technically the second atomic bomb...” [D_Idaho, post 37]
“It wasn’t the world’s first atomic bomb.” [ifinnegan, post 45]
Technically, neither statement is correct.
The device detonated on 16 Jul 1945 was not a bomb, just an experimental warhead put together to test the feasibility of a basic concept.
The warhead still had to be fit inside a munitions case capable of being loaded onto an aircraft, to withstand any shock & vibration of transport to the launch site, more shocks & vibrations of takeoff and flight to the target, and - finally - to function reliably when the dropped weapon’s fuze ordered it to go off. The technical term is weaponization.
B-29s with special modifications had to be built, to employ the weapons. These were produced on the assembly line of the Martin bomber plant at Bellevue, Nebraska. Paul Tibbets was sent to choose the aircraft; the story has been told that after he made his first choice, he was advised to change his mind - his first pick was guessed to be unlucky, as it had been through final assembly on the day before the weekend. Or the day after.
Fortunately, some very good people realized all this from the outset and worked alongside the scientific teams, to render everything compatible and available when the moment came.
Even after the successful test of the plutonium core on 16 July 1945, risks remained very high. A sample size of one is better than nothing, but few were sure what might happen. Estimates covered a broad range, from “fizzle” to “the entire atmosphere of the planet will go up in flames.”
The weapon dropped over Hiroshima was of substantially different design, using uranium instead of plutonium. The experts deemed that it involved less risk and so declined any further testing. Its first live test was thus the combat drop on 6 August 1945.
509 CG had dropped a number of inert bomb-cases beforehand, to test out the aerodynamic stability of the munitions, and the function of subsystems. One subsystem never functioned correctly in all those rehearsals: the proximity fuze, which used radio waves to sense when the weapon approached the ground sufficiently close, and then sent the triggering signal.
So the first successful test of that system came in action.
“On Hiroshima attack anniversary, survivors share history’s lessons”
Don’t become allies with mass murders?
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