[codewench]

Obviously looking at it from today's perspective it's (hopefully) unthinkable, but there is a lot written from contemporary sources which make a fairly persuasive argument.

The main concerns were that the Japanese government was simply not in a place where it could surrender, which meant a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland was seen as mandatory. Given the prior experiences of how dedicated Japanese defenders could be (eg Mount Suribachi), it was assumed that any actual attempt to take the Japanese mainland would result in untold deaths, to the point where the US has enough Purple Heart medals created (in anticipation of the casualties am invasion would involve) that they didn't have to restart production until 2008. As horrifying as it is, the first atomic bomb was considered the lesser evil. That said, Nagasaki is much much harder to defend.

Unrelated, but I recommend everyone who can to visit Hiroshima and visit the museums there. Hopefully it will instill in everyone a fervent desire to never again see such horrific things enacted again.

[fortran77]

> Unrelated, but I recommend everyone who can to visit Hiroshima and visit the museums there. Hopefully it will instill in everyone a fervent desire to never again see such horrific things enacted again.

The Nagasaki muesum is very good, too. And it's a nicer town to visit today. (We were just there last month.)

[throw0101d]

> That said, Nagasaki is much much harder to defend.

The first bomb was dropped August 6.

The Japanese War Cabinet met on August 9 to discuss the situation, and concluded that the US didn't have the resources for more, so they concluded to not surrender. Even after the first bomb was dropped.

In the middle of the meeting they learned of the second bomb which was dropped that morning.

After the second bomb the War Cabinet was split 3-3. They called in the full cabinet and that was split as well.

Two bombs weren't enough to decisively convince them to surrender, and so the Emperor had to be called in to break the deadlock.

And yet we are to believe that even though two bombs were barely enough to force a surrender, zero bombs would have sufficed?

[_hao]

Japan's decision to surrender was most likely due to the fact that the Soviet Union invaded Manchuria with 1.5 million men.[1] Yes, the atomic bombings were horrible, but the fire bombing of Tokyo wasn't much better. The Japanese regime didn't care that much. When the Soviets declared war that was the breaking point and their situation became hopeless. This point is very often overlooked by US based media and historians (I guess for obvious reasons), but the fact of the matter is that we don't know if only the two bombs would've been enough to make Japan capitulate.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

[throw0101d]

> This point is very often overlooked by US based media and historians (I guess for obvious reasons), but the fact of the matter is that we don't know if only the two bombs would've been enough to make Japan capitulate.

This is covered by Walker in his book Prompt and Utter Destruction:

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/829496

And he still concludes that dropping the bombs was a necessary element in their surrender.

The Japanese were expecting the Russians/Soviets to enter the war: the only surprise was that it was sooner than they expected (Spring 1946). Fighting them was already taken into account in their 'calculations'.

From a 1946 article:

> About a week after V-J Day, I was one of a small group of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent, well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major move if the war had continued. He replied: "You would probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack would have been made on such and such beaches."

> "Could you have repelled this landing?" we asked, and he answered: "It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you."

> "What would have happened then?" we asked.

> He replied: "We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated," by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-...

I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been willing to pull out of Manchuria, lose that territory, and use those troops for home island defence.

[littlestymaar]

> I'd be willing to bet that the Japanese would have been willing to pull out of Manchuria

Given the success of Soviet's new combined arm doctrine (later called “deep battle”), I don't think “pull out of Manchuria” would have been a possibility, as the Japanese force there would very likely have collapsed to a point where getting back to Japan would have been impossible (think Dunkirk but with much more land to leave behind you and with an enemy moving even faster and where you don't have neither air or sea superiority).

[otherme123]

Japan was in talks with the soviets for a couple of months, thinking that they were somewhat neutral and intermediating with the USA a negotiated peace. On the 9th they learned the hard way that it was a ploy while they massed troops, and their situation was now a full invasion of the USA with nukes and the Soviets, with zero allies or even neutrals to lean on

[sivakon]

A great article on this topic is https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-jap...

Youtube video by Shaun goes in detail as well https://youtu.be/RCRTgtpC-Go?si=XY6Yr_nhzNlejBHK

[zdw]

And even then there was still an attempted coup to try to stop the surrender:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

[Animats]

How Japan made the decision to surrender is well covered in the book "Japan's Longest Day", originally published in 1973. Many of the major players were interviewed. There's a reasonably accurate movie version worth watching, if you're interested in this.

It's a very strange story of decision-making under extreme pressure. No one was in charge. The Navy was barely talking to the Army. The civilian government had been sidelined from control of military matters years before. The Emperor was supposed to be a figurehead. And, as pointed out above, there was an attempted coup to stop the surrender.

[cataphract]

So killing civilians en masse is fine, as long it forces the enemy to surrender with (probably) fewer casualties? Why even have laws of war then, if we adjust adjudicate these questions with a utilitarian calculus?

[nihzm]

> So killing civilians en masse is fine, as long it forces the enemy to surrender with (probably) fewer casualties

Of course not. Startegic calculations for warfare should not be conflated with a moral justifications for military actions. We have to come to terms with the fact that it was a morally unjustifiable decision, regardless of the effects it had on the war. This is something that too many people forget today.

> Why even have laws of war then

I think laws of war (the ones that work) are only an attempt to change the incentives that are presented to the belligerents during warfare, in such a way that the confilct is less damaging. They are not much about making the belligerents more morally virtuous in any sense other than a consequentialist / utlitarian one.

[0xBDB]

> Why even have laws of war then

They didn't by our standards. A lot of what we think of as the laws of war today were clarified after WWII. Bombing civilians was illegal, but not in retaliation; so the US could bomb Hiroshima because the Axis had bombed Coventry. The fact that that was the Germans and probably an accident didn't matter.

If this seems extremely sketchy that's because it was, but so was Nuremberg. The Holocaust wasn't illegal for the Nazis to do to their own population - the prosecutors at the trials had to make up a standard of "behavior that shocks the conscience" that previously didn't exist in international law.

None of this reflects on morality, only legality, of course. But the legalities then were pretty primitive.

[FrojoS]

What makes you say, that the bombing of Coventry was "probably an accident"? There was repeated, and clearly well planned out bombing of the city between 1940-1942 [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz

[0xBDB]

It was not a remark intended to excuse the Germans. There is some evidence, which I am admittedly struggling to find a citation for at the moment, that the early 1940 raids were generally intended to hit military targets and the Germans just weren't good enough at bombing to be that discriminate.

Later on of course both sides were hitting civilian targets deliberately, and using incendiaries and high explosives. But it's possible the British were the first to do it deliberately, in retaliation for the Germans doing it accidentally (which they naturally did not believe).

[WalterBright]

Another factor in the surrender was the Japanese had intelligence that a third bomb was to be dropped on Tokyo. (That intelligence later turned out to be false.)

One bomb could have been all that America had. Two bombs meant more were coming.

[mandmandam]

> One bomb could have been all that America had. Two bombs meant more were coming.

That's not logic bud.

Zero bombs could mean that was all America had. If you can make one then you can make two.

[WalterBright]

The Germans and Japanese each managed to build only one super battleship - the Bismarck and the Yamato.

The bomb was even more expensive to develop, and the Japanese (with their own bomb program) surely knew that.

[Straw]

Japan built two Yamato-class battleships, the Yamato and the Musashi.

[mhh__]

Tirpitz?

[littlestymaar]

You're just missing an entire half of the story here: which is the USSR attacking on the 9th of August!

Of course if you omit the second most important factor then things start becoming obvious, but in reality the answer to this question is far from obvious (in neither direction, needless to say, the tankies who claim with certainty that the bombing was not needed are equally wrong)

[cocodill]

well, by August 12, the Red Army had broken through in almost all positions.

[littlestymaar]

In Manchuria, but the question of mainland Japan was still open.

But overlooking the Soviet invasion is clearly missing half the picture here.

[cocodill]

I believe it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war and quick breakthrough that forced the Japanese to quickly surrender on favorable terms.

[littlestymaar]

But that belief is unfortunately not more verifiable than the one that assumes it's the atomic bomb that did it.

We cannot categorically rule out any of the three hypothesis:

- the Manchuria invasion was sufficient

- the nuclear bombing was sufficient

- they were both necessary for the immediate surrender of Japan

[nsonha]

> The Japanese War Cabinet met on August 9 to discuss the situation, and concluded that the US didn't have the resources for more

does that sound believable to you? The Japanese somehow had intel on a secret new weapon? And confident about it to the point they are willing to bet their entire country on it, in a war that's already ending?

Or does that sound like manufactured consent?

[ahazred8ta]

> The Japanese somehow had intel on a secret new weapon

Yes. They did. The Mexico branch of the Japanese espionage service knew about the Trinity test in advance and sent agents to collect fallout to analyze. They already knew before Hiroshima that we had a working atomic bomb. They underestimated our isotope separation production capacity because their own U-235 isotope separation plant was behind schedule. There have been books written about the Japanese atomic bomb project. The day after Hiroshima, the Japanese government announced "We also have atomic bombs and we will use them against the invasion forces." They were expecting the war to last another year. The head of the Japanese atomic bomb project said that his military boss expected the war to last another year.

[kps]

> the US didn't have the resources for more

They were correct that the US didn't have the resources for a second uranium bomb.

[throw0101d]

>> the US didn't have the resources for more

> They were correct that the US didn't have the resources for a second uranium bomb.

Because the difference between a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb is meaningful when you're the target…

[kps]

Japan didn't know until August 9 that the US was able to build plutonium bombs.

Edit since I can't reply: The difference is meaningful when you're deciding whether to surrender. If you know that the US doesn't have enough refined uranium for another uranium bomb, and you have no evidence that the US can build plutonium bombs, then you have grounds to believe the bombing of Hiroshima was not repeatable.

[throw0101d]

> If you know that the US doesn't have enough refined uranium for another uranium bomb […]

There was no way for the Japanese to know what the US was capable of. It was wishful thinking with zero evidence on the part of the Japanese leadership.

[WalterBright]

> There was no way for the Japanese to know what the US was capable of.

The Japanese had their own bomb program underway.

[JKCalhoun]

You're arguing semantics but aren't really making a counter point.

[hnbad]

The unstated assumption in this is that it was important for the US to be the one to defeat Japan. It was not just about defeating Japan, it was also about the Soviet Union not defeating it first.

The US had been continously fire bombing Japan at the point the atomic bombs dropped. In the grand scheme of things the bombs were just very large blips in waves upon waves of destruction.

Japan would have been defeated without a US ground invasion and without the atomic bombs. But it would have been defeated by the Soviet Union, not the US.

There were three possible outcomes:

* an unconditional surrender to the Soviet Union, possibly following the death or arrest of the Emperor

* a conditional surrender to the US granting immunity to the Emperor

* an unconditional last-ditch surrender to the US to prevent a Soviet advance and further loss of territory

The atomic bombs played a very small part in this. As has been stated repeatedly in attempts to justify their use: the Japanese were "dedicated" to defend the mainland and the Emperor to the point of performing suicide attacks. The deaths from the atomic bombings meant very little relative to the civilian lives that had already been lost to the fire bombings before, after and throughout. But in consequence this meant that the integrity of the mainland territory and the life of the Emperor meant a lot - and this was threatened by the prospect of an invasion, not further atomic bombings.

The sad irony is that the demand of the surrender being unconditional was ultimately more about narrative-building and optics as the US effectively gave Japan what it wanted by leaving the Emperor untouched and not making any territorial changes. It's clear to see why the US demanded it but the outcome effectively met most of the terms a conditional surrender would have set prior to the atomic bombings.

In consequence the atomic bombs provided very little strategic benefits and only meant the US would have to go on with those attacks on its conscience - not that it seemed to weigh too heavily.

[will5421]

Killing civilians to save soldiers

[startupsfail]

It is a bit surprising that so much damage was inflicted on civilians with firebombing and all for the sake of what looks like vindictiveness. Surely after the victory it would have been possible to write the books, stating it was « unconditional surrender » regardless of what kind of surrender it actually was (it is victors who tend to be able to write history books as they see fit.)

[mc32]

Don't worry, the Japanese are pretty good at writing their own history too.

[mmustapic]

> The main concerns were that the Japanese government was simply not in a place where it could surrender

That’s the horrifying thing, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians so your enemy surrenders.

[mrguyorama]

The Japanese populace, whether they wanted to or not, was fully prepared and planning to defend the home islands with their lives as gruesomely as possible.

If America had not dropped the bombs and the Soviets ended up finishing off Japan like so many seem to think they would, the Soviets at the end of the war were NOT known for being gentle in their dominance.

There was no ending to Japan in WWII that did not kill hundreds of thousands of civilians.

[littlestymaar]

Strategic bombing were attempted multiple time during the war (first by the Germans on UK, and the UK/US on Germany then Japan) without success (and in most cases it actually strengthened the resolve)

[chasd00]

> That’s the horrifying thing, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians so your enemy surrenders.

yeah, war sucks. Especially a world wide war, it's not a fun time.

"there is nothing good in war except its ending" - Lincoln