Do you think the allies have any blood on their hands for Heroshima and Nagasaki ...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


According to many here, this was a minority position in the government. MtG, DF, and others have argued, persuasvively IMO, that the more fanatical elements of the Japanese government would have mounted a coup had the government tried to surrender. Apparently, even with the Atomic bombings and the Soviet invasion, these elements wished to fight on and only the direct order of the Emperor made them lay down their weapons.

It should be kept in mind that the USSR captured Manchuria in days, slicing through the IJA as if it were warm butter. This, not the Atomic bombings (which were really no more damaging than the fire bombings, though those were pertty terrible) were what convinced the Emperor that resistence was futile.

Can someone remind of what day the USSR declared war on Japan- ISTR that it was AFTER the bombing of Hiroshima.

[MrFun]

Let's not forget the atrocities Japan committed against Chinese civilians and Allied POWs.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrFun
Let's not forget the atrocities Japan committed against Chinese civilians and Allied POWs.

seeing as how Japanese civilians are not guilty under the laws of war, that is not directly relevant to this discussions. Bringing in such logic invites those who would make everything an endless cycle of revenge, and who to this day would justify 9/11 with everything from Hiroshima to cold war era atrocities. The US DID NOT at the time justify the bombing by the Japanese atrocities. The Japanese atrocities confirmed the need to defeat Japan, and gave context to any negotiations for a a conditional surrender - the bombing itself was justified at a broad scale by the horrors of the alternatives, and in detail, like other strategic bombing, by the presence of strategic industry in the city in question - Ned claims the industry was not located in the city center - I presume it was considered at the time that with the city center gone, the suburban industry would cease to function. This is not to say that such an approach to strategic bombing is one that we should follow today - it is not and we do not - but in the context of WW2, after 6 years of genocidal war (as you point out) that was considered adequate, and does, IMHO, differentiate what the allies did from the deliberate genocide practiced by their adversaries.

[MrFun]

Where did I say Japanese CIVILIANS were responsible??

[Ned]

LoTM, the invasion of Japan would have been necessary if, and only if, we STILL wanted an unconditional surrender.

I think the Soviet invasion occurred essentially simultaneously with the bombing of Hiroshima. However, if we had not dropped the bomb, I think that that invasion would have ended any Japanese hope of a military stalemate and forced a surrender on fewer conditions.

Also, if the Emperor were part of the problem and not the solution, we could have dropped the second bomb on his palace. Now, that would have really sent a message.

Finally, I think Truman deliberately used the bomb under 1) to force an unconditional surrender and 2) to send a message to the Soviets that America was "invincible." We had been having troubles with Stalin concerning Eastern Europe.

[Giancarlo]

Re: Do you think the allies have any blood on their hands for Heroshima and Nagasaki ...

Originally posted by Vesayen
especially because they leaflited the cities first telling them to get the h eck out of dodge?

Of course not.

They did what they had to do to end the war. If it took dropping nukes then so be it. If the US invaded Japan the casualities would of been a lot greater.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Do the allies have any blood on their hands? Well every country has blood on their hands in war. The question is should the allies be ashamed of the bomb drops? I say no. They wanted to have a final end to the war as soon as possible (do you blame them?) and did it the best way they knew how. As for the arguments for 'conditional' surrender, and little as I believe it, the Americans did not want a Germany situation, where you allow the country to rise up again. Allowing the emperor to stay was considered too much of a risk.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ned
LoTM, the invasion of Japan would have been necessary if, and only if, we STILL wanted an unconditional surrender.

I think the Soviet invasion occurred essentially simultaneously with the bombing of Hiroshima. However, if we had not dropped the bomb, I think that that invasion would have ended any Japanese hope of a military stalemate and forced a surrender on fewer conditions.

Also, if the Emperor were part of the problem and not the solution, we could have dropped the second bomb on his palace. Now, that would have really sent a message.

Finally, I think Truman deliberately used the bomb under 1) to force an unconditional surrender and 2) to send a message to the Soviets that America was "invincible." We had been having troubles with Stalin concerning Eastern Europe.

Given the troubles we had with a conditional surrender in 1918, and the fact that even today people are claiming that the occupation of Japan was successful because Japan was so decisively beaten, (in contrast to er, a certain OTHER occupation) and given that the allies had been calling for unconditional surrender for years, so that the public would have had difficulty understanding a withdrawl from that standard - I think its easy to underestimate the difficulty HST had in negotiating a conditional surrender.

As for dropping a 2nd bomb on the palace, that would have meant bombing Tokyo again - what would that have saved in civilian lives? And it would lost the use of the emperor to call on Japanese to surrender, which proved important.

[Ben Kenobi]

Will look up the dates for Hiroshima and for the Russian invasion of Manchuria. I do believe that the invasion came first because the Americans did not want the Russians to have even more influence in the far East.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Re: Do you think the allies have any blood on their hands for Heroshima and Nagasaki ...

Originally posted by Ned


They leafleted virtually all targets of US bombing except for one:

Hiroshima.

Hiroshima was, prior to the bombing, completely unscathed. It had industry in the suburbs, but the bomb landed directly downtown on the civilian areas. Truman said to the American people that he had struck a "military base."

These are facts. You draw the conclusions.

Hiroshima was also not the intended target. They had to go there because of weather.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ned
I think the horror of the bombs did sicken a lot of higher-ups in the US administration. Just look what happened during the first Gulf war when the highway of death was shown on TV. It sickened people so much that Powel and others called for a halt.

And you know what? The "highway of death" wasn't particularly deadly, because most of the Iraqis knew to get out of their tanks

[Ben Kenobi]

47. August 6, 1945 -- Hiroshima bombed (Aug. 5th at 7:15P.M., Washington time, Truman, p. 421)

48. August 8, 1945 -- Molotov informed Amb. Harriman in Moscow that Russia would consider itself at war with Japan as of Aug. 9th. Truman received this news on August 8th and immediately announced it at press conference. (Truman, p. 425)

49. August 9, 1945 -- Nagasaki bombed. ("We gave the Japanese three days in which to make up their minds to surrender, and the bombing would have been held off another two days had weather permitted." Truman, p. 426)

[Q Classic]

the japanese deserved it.

was it right? no, not particularly.

[Joseph]

No!

[Datajack Franit]

A land invasion of Japan would have killed millions of people- dropping bombs and killing in the order of hundreds of thousands was definitely more acceptable as an issue