“My only regret is we didn’t give them more of a chance to surrender…first. There was a 3rd option.
1. Do nothing
2. Nuke civilian population centers
——
3: Use 1 or 2 nukes on strictly military targets close to their seat of government. ... would have had a minuscule number of civilian deaths (compared to a big city).
We could always have went back to cities later, except this time with more of a superior moral position.” [Phoenix8, post 17]
Your statements are nonsensical, in light of the verified historical record.
The Allies did give the Japanese more than one opportunity to surrender, before 6 August 1945. They ignored the offers. Not until after the second strike - on Nagasaki - did the Emperor intervene. And the military largely desired to continue fighting: as tlozo noted in post 27, and BiteYourSelf in post 156, a coup by mid-grade Imperial Army officers against his rule came within inches of succeeding.
The US Strategic Bombing Survey determined that by July 1945 there were no “purely military targets,” nor any industrial-production targets located away from civilian population centers. Dispersion of war-materiel production into civilian neighborhoods was far more advanced than in any other nation in history.
To a greater extent than in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan had integrated its non-combatant populace into the plans of the armed forces. Pretty much no civilians left; 11-year-olds like the girl in the France24 story were being trained en masse to assault Allied invasion troops with sharpened bamboo stakes.
Keep in mind these facts; American bombers had already visited more injury on those non-existent “civilian population centers,” hitting over 60 cities, killing many more people from March 1945 through early August 1945, than did the two atomic strikes together.
There weren’t enough atomic bombs in existence to carry out any extended bombardment campaign in the near term. And the bombs themselves were still mostly untested; a true fissile yield did succeed on 16 Jul 1945 but complete weaponization never did succeed until the strike on Hiroshima itself. Crews from 509CG dropped something like nine inert shapes, and not a single proximity fuze functioned.
It’s cute that moralizers wring their hands so many years on, but in the midst of a war such as that still raging in summer 1945, moral navel-gazing would have been a road to failure. In such instances, effectiveness must take priority over morality - especially the overly precious sort indulged in after the fact.
“ The Allies did give the Japanese more than one opportunity to surrender, before 6 August 1945. They ignored the offers”
That was without the tangible knowledge that we had such a weapon. Plus they had no idea how many we had. We could have told them 100 and they would have believed it.
We had a few more as I recall then with a relatively short period of time more would have arrived,