How the Atomic Bomb Saved 4,000,000 Lives

Omaha World Herald | November, 1987 | Davis

[Captain Kirk]

This assumes unconditional surrender. Had we agreed up front to conditional surrender (e.g. letting the Japanese keep the emperor) both the mass cooking of babies and little old ladies and an invasion could have been avoided.

[connor_in]

ping for later

[Rb ver. 2.0]

"I wonder how many lives could have been saved if we had the balls to drop 1 or 2 after 9/11."

Exactly where would we have dropped them?

[rochester_veteran]

My Dad was on the USS Doyle, a destroyer/minesweeper. He was headed to the invasion of Japan when the A-bombs were dropped. My Uncle Ed was an MP and spent some time in Hiroshima.

[SoCal Pubbie]

AFTER the Emperor ordered the surrender, a group of officers attacked the Imperial Palace with the goal of capturing Hirohito, destroying the recording announcing the surrender that was to be played to the populace, and lead the military to seize control of the country. If one of the local generals had gone along with it, there may have never been a surrender.

[SoCal Pubbie]

My only question about the article is where the fuel to fly the 12, 725 Japanese planes was supposed to come from? Japan didn't have any.

[colorado tanker]

I completely agree.

The horror of Okinawa was the preview, and would have been magnified a million-fold. Japanese civilians had been taught that the Americans would slaughter the men, rape the women and enslave the kids - and they believed it. They were ready to fight to the death and never surrender.

Before the A-Bombs Gen. Lemay had destroyed virtually all the cities in the firebombing, which would have convinced any other country to surrender. But they didn't.

The casualties, and especially the Japanese casualties, would have been unimaginable. Truman did the right thing.

[Eclectica]

Did he see action?.

YEAH—He saw Action!!!!!

He was shot down five times...once by P-40s! That one killed the co-pilot sitting next to him! His logbook is on the Internet (VP-11 site—search PBY, VP-11, logbook).

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Japan conquered the Dutch East Indies to secure oil for their wars.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

It is never right to do a wrong thing in order that good may result.
It is OK to kill an invader. Bombing the invader's mother, father, grandmother and grandfather doesn't sound like killing an invader.
Bombing munitions factories is generally seen as a normal part of a war.
Looks like it is not possible to say that "bombing saved lives".

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Thanks, the link is:

http://www.pbycia.org/

[pabianice]

Bombing a country that started the war is not just good tactics but morally correct.

[CholeraJoe]

Great read!

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

"It is never right to do a wrong thing in order that good may result."

Ends do not justify means, but I would dispute that neither the end--the total capitullation of Japan--nor the means, US military force, including use of the atomic bomb, were wrong.

It would have been wrong to NOT to drop the atomic bomb. Dropping the atomic bomb in these circumstances was the moral choice. It prevented the invasion of Japan, and the needless slaughter of 30,000,000 to 40,000,000 Japanese, civilian and military, and the death of of what? 1,000,000 to 4,000,000 American servicemen, including my aviator father, and marine uncles. It resulted in the liberation of all concurred territories.

"It is OK to kill an invader. Bombing the invader's mother, father, grandmother and grandfather doesn't sound like killing an invader."

I disagree with the careful shaping and phrasing of your assertion. What was going to make the Japanese stop invading, stop attacking, and not just us.

Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor, they attacked and invaded the Philippines. They attacked and invaded China, Korea, the Dutch East Indies, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Burma. They slaughtered millions of innocent people, they enslaved others, some they raped, some they worked to death, some they used for biological experiments. What was their objective in doing this and who did the wrong thing? Get a good answer from the Japanese before you ask this question of the Americans.

Please reread the Japanese plans for the defense of their island. Children, grandmothers, grandfathers, women all would have been enlisted in that defense. There was no distinction between civilian and military. It is starkly clear that use of the atomic bomb absolutely did, in fact, without the least question, save lives.

Consider a world in which we neither invaded Japan nor dropped the bomb. Japan would have been left in control of the bulk of its empire, the southwest Pacific, its resources and navigation lanes. How long would it have been before it rebuilt its forces started a new war? We dint just liberate the nations the Japanese conquered, we also liberated the Japanese people from their military overlords.

[TexanToTheCore]

"This assumes unconditional surrender. Had we agreed up front to conditional surrender (e.g. letting the Japanese keep the emperor) both the mass cooking of babies and little old ladies and an invasion could have been avoided."


If I remember correctly, the survival of the Emperor was not the only issue in a conditional surrender. Most of the government would have been left intact. We also picked intelligence that the conditional surrender that was offered was a stall for more time.

Dropping the bomb was a good decision.

[Skooz]

Your contention that the bomb was for Joe Stalin is absolutely wrong.

You are correct, of course. But, that is the revisionist line lately taken by the anti-Americans who try to make the assertion that dropping the bomb was unnecessary.

Such a view is anti-historical and relies on a breathtaking ignorance of the times. To have had the bomb in 1945--and not used it--would have been an act of madness.

[TexanToTheCore]

I am constantly stunned at how ingnorant people are of World War I and World War II. Many seem to envision WWII as a larger Vietnam War, not too big to be inconvenient, really.

It required everyone's contribution from the children who picked up recyclable scrap to the men on the front lines. We were fighting for our lives.

[Oakleaf]

The history is even more complicated than that. After the great loss of life at Saipan - I believe it was 900 US dead a day - the "Joint Chiefs" wanted to use poison gas on the Japanese. FDR said no but his only reason was that he was afraid the Japanese would retailiate. (I'm sorry I can't source this but I read it a long time ago and didn't save the reference).

[Oakleaf]

That is, would retaliate by using poison gas against our troops.

[Centurion2000]

Far worse would be what might have happened to Japan as a nation and as a culture.

There would be no Japanese culture left and that territory would probably have been annexed by the US considering how much blood we paid for it.

With American forces locked in combat in the south of Japan, little could have prevented the Soviet Union from marching into the northern half of the Japanese home islands.

Russia would never have been able to do that considering that they could not effectively project power across the ocean.