[diogenescynic]

Because anyone who knows the actual history, knows that's bullshit and OP could have just looked up the facts instead of making up something.

Japan was going to fight to the last man/woman/child. They were going to have seniors and children fight with sticks. The Pacific theater was already one of the bloodiest battle fronts in the war and the US was battle weary and didn't want to expend another 500,000 Americans to invade Japan. They dropped nukes to avoid another extended and unbelievably bloody conflict.

Go listen to the Hardcore History podcasts "Supernova in the East" and it'll make it much more clear.

[engineer_22]

I don't think it's bullshit. I think Navy Admiral William F. Halsey did say those things.

"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before."[1]

Those are the facts... GP made nothing up.

OTOH - the Cold War should be ample evidence of the West's distrust of Stalin and USSR generally. I think it's entirely plausible the motivation to drop the bomb included Soviet deterrence.

[1] http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

[TedDoesntTalk]

> [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out,

He may have said that, but after reading books on Oppenheimer and other scientists at the Manhatten Project, I don't believe it is accurate

[mezentius]

I made a post about this above, but the difference between a negotiated peace and an unconditional surrender is rather crucial. The Japanese were willing to seek the former but found the latter politically unacceptable until sufficient pressure was applied.

[diogenescynic]

The quote exists but doesn’t mean it’s correct.

[pessimizer]

> Japan was going to fight to the last man/woman/child.

This is not history, this is a hypothetical.

> They were going to have seniors and children fight with sticks.

I suspect this would have been ineffective.

[misiti3780]

The Japanese were not known for surrendering. There were mass suicides because they refused to be taken alive:

https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/japanese-mass-suicide...

[TedDoesntTalk]

It's not ineffective in all situations. A single soldier, isolated from his group, fighting 10 seniors or children simultaneously, is not going to do well. Plenty of people are killed in the Middle-East from rock throwing.

[jp57]

It's not an implausible hypothesis that an invasion of Japan would have been a larger, and proportionally bloodier, version of the takings of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two very bloody battles.

[Matticus_Rex]

Right, but at no point were those the only options (even according to key military figures).

[kragen]

The firebombs the Japanese flew across the Pacific, setting fires in the Pacific Northwest of the US, were largely built by children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

[beepbooptheory]

you are right, I am convinced, this was obviously the best action the Americans could have done. Why is it so hard for people to get that?

[dghlsakjg]

Because there is a lot of evidence that it wasn’t the case and that we knew it wasn’t the case.

The most damning evidence against it being necessary is that the Japanese were actively trying to get the Soviets to help them negotiate peace in the weeks leading up to the bombing. The soviets played them, and didn’t carry the message since they were secretly in the process of staging an invasion against Japan in Manchuria, an event that the Japanese knew would be fatal to their war. It’s worth noting that Hirohito did not order the surrender of Japan after hearing of Hiroshima, but after hearing of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria, which happened a few hours before Nagasaki.

Much of the reluctance to surrender was around guaranteeing that Hirohito could remain. A concession that we granted in the end.

Also keep in mind that the nuclear attacks weren’t even the most destructive aerial attacks that the US possessed. The firebombing of Tokyo did more damage to a wider area and killed more people. In fact, Hiroshima was the 6th most destructive bombing raid as far as land area destroyed goes. American forces wiped dozens of cities off the map using conventional attacks before Hiroshima.

Before August 6 the Japanese politicians were more than aware that the war was lost, and that surrender was necessary. There is a lot of the historical record that shows this.

There is also a lot of records that the bombing was as much a demonstration of power to Stalin as anything else.

Many of the justifications that we see know don’t appear in the written record until after 1945. You are welcome to do the research.

Most serious historians of the time acknowledge that the bombings might have shortened the war, but the effect was minimal. On the order of a few days or weeks at best.

Most of this is not disputed fact. The interpretation is certainly debatable, but we hide the complexity of the situation by perpetuating the story that it was either nuclear bombings or an invasion that would have killed millions.

More info with citations: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/why-the-us-really-bo...

[mcguire]

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/52.pdf

[beepbooptheory]

This is a pretty extreme failure of me to remember Poe's law, im very sorry. I just thought the reasons people find it hard to believe are extremely obvious, considering the almost existential death and destruction these bombs caused. Like, I truly can't imagine defending it in whatever way.

that said, I do really appreciate this history, and while I firmly believe that we dont even need of these reasons to assert the moral human failure of the act, knowing them makes it even more disgusting.

[dghlsakjg]

Haha. Sorry about that one!

The interesting part is that there are a lot of people in this comment section that are 100% convinced that the nuclear option was the only one. Your extreme take is a pretty standard one in the US…

[misiti3780]

I suspect (as some have indicated), this is a very centric version of the history, but that does not mean it is incorrect.

[Matticus_Rex]

If some of the key figures involved can disagree with that assessment, why can't others?