For one thing, this can only be justified using 20/20 hindsight. What if the Japan didn’t surrender after the second atomic bomb was dropped? If you keep using them, then you will eventually reach the point where the death toll in the “mass destruction” scenario exceeds your “invasion” scenario estimates anyway.
Secondly … If the estimated casualty count of an invasion is too high, then don’t invade at all. It’s not like Japan was located on the U.S. border and would be a threat to the U.S. indefinitely. Its ability to project military force over long distances had ended long before August of 1945.
Hiroshima was a major port and a military headquarters, and therefore a strategic target.
Hiroshima was chosen as the first target due to its military and industrial values. As a military target, Hiroshima was a major army base that housed the headquarters of the Japanese 5th Division and the 2nd Army Headquarters. It was also an important port in southern Japan and a communications center.
https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=49
That is the most idiot thing I’ve heard in a while. Just don’t invade! Wow, they really needed you around in 1945. I guess the hell with the thousands of US POWs in Japan. Just abandon them to save enemy lives.
You have the viewpoint of someone who never spend a day in uniform.
Tell us how you explain to families of POWs that you have abandoned their son to his fate to protect Japanese lives.
Your wrong.
“Invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.”
For one thing, this can only be justified using 20/20 hindsight.”
Not to a US military that just wrapped up the incomplete battle of Okinawa. We basically sealed off the northern half of the island and called it a win. It was a horrific battle on the first home island. We knew exactly what would happen invading the rest of Japan. Postwar intelligence confirmed they were right.
It’s called complete unconditional surrender period. No quarter given. Total war.
>>I never understood this silly rationale for dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations: “Invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.”
Invading Japan would have cost millions of *American* lives. It’s not our job to minimize enemy casualties; that’s the enemy commanders job.
Continuing the war would have caused MORE DEATH than ending the war even by the brutal means of using two nukes. A lot of people were dying every day that war continued.
Sitting back and waiting would have resulted in those deaths continuing AND 4-6 million Japanese starving to death in the next 6 months. So no, even sitting back and just blockading and bombing as usual was a more expensive option in terms of the total number of deaths.
” never understood this silly rationale for dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations: “Invading Japan would have cost millions of lives.”
For one thing, this can only be justified using 20/20 hindsight. What if the Japan didn’t surrender after the second atomic bomb was dropped? If you keep using them, then you will eventually reach the point where the death toll in the “mass destruction” scenario exceeds your “invasion” scenario estimates anyway.”
Silly rationale??!! Really? Apparently, you’re not aware of the context in which the decision was made. The island (Tarawa, Peleilu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, etc) fighting throughout the Pacific was brutal with the Japanese fighting to the last man (their militaristic culture forbade surrender). Civilians were jumping off cliffs (some holding children) to their deaths based on Japanese propaganda regarding the Allies. The proposed invasion scenario of millions of deaths was very plausible based upon this history. Also, remember that the Japanese were still in Manchuria working to death thousands of prisoners/day. Their militaristic, fanatical culture simply wouldn’t allow for a surrender as noted above.
The only way you break that is to break their will. Seeing that surrender would not be the case, the two choices Truman had were both horrible; in my view, he made the “less bad” of the two. To underscore the Japanese fanaticism, they only surrendered six days after THE SECOND BOMB was dropped on Nagasaki.
As for 20/20 hindsight, here’s where that comes in. Dropping those bombs, as horrible as it was, probably saved lives in the future as it dissuaded countries from using more powerful weapons.
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.
The Japanese political and military structure had to be destroyed. They would have remained a continuous threat otherwise.
If they had not surrendered after Nagasaki, we would have invaded on schedule. As more bombs (maybe a dozen) came online, they would have been employed as tactical nuclear weapons, including on the advance across the Kanto Plain to Tokyo.