Americans delude themselves into thinking nuking Japan twice was necessary

You realize they still occupied large parts indochina and burma, right?

I still think that the blockade is the more ethical solution. There was no legitimate reason to nuke innocent people out of pure spite.

>red star on blue field
God I'm fucking glad the USSR is dead.

Why let Russia build up power in the obvious post war conflicts that are going to occur? Demonstrating the power of the Atomic bomb and getting an Aisian ally was practically nessecary, Chiang's dictatorship could fall apart with a breath, meaning he was a no go, Russia was almost certainly not going to let go of Manchuria (which they didn't), the bomb essentially forced Japan into the US sphere and deterred any ideas stalin would've had for direct military expansion via war.

Well then your fucking retarded. Millions of japs dying from starvation or becoming emaciated over multiple months is preferable to thousands dying quickly from 3 bombs?

the legitimate reason was that is was the most egalitarian decision, thats legitimate enough as it is. After a decade of world war, whatever saves more lives is the right choice , and the nukes saved the lives of every japanese civilian that wasnt in one of those two cities. I fail to see how making an entire population starve to death is more ethical than forcing the military to surrender directly.

They would have surrendered before it got that bad.

>Blockading Germany is okay
>Blockading Japan is EVIL
>Also dropping nukes on civilians is apparently better

Wew.

doubtful, it was already really bad and the japanese military proved itself to be untrustworthy, unhinged, illogical, and fanatical. There was no negotiating with them from a mere blockade, they showed that even with the war lost, they were still gonna try to kill as many americans as possible until they couldnt fight anymore, and when your enemy is that utterly unreasonable you have a green light to make them feel the nuclear heat.

Well I agree with you, that's mostly hindsight.

How can they kill Americans if they're being blockaded?

They still had several million troops overseas by the time that they surrendered. Also, several islands (including formosa) would have had to be taken in order to complete the stranglehold that was placed on japan. American plans actually called for kyushu to be invaded to rush the blockade along.

blockading japan isnt evil, its simply an inferior alternative to what they ultimately did. Also nuking the middle of europe is different than nuking an island nation, they were trying to liberate europe, even the germans themselves, from the nazi party. They were not trying to liberate japan, they merely wanted japan to fucking give up and they gave them plenty of chances beforehand.

There were American POW's in Hiroshima that were killed when by the bomb. Since when is it okay for a government to bomb its own people?

They didn't know that there were american POW's in Hiroshima at the time. Again, this is mostly just hindsight. Truman chose the nukes because it was what he perceived to be the best option at the time with the limited information that was availible to him.

>They didn't know that there were american POW's in Hiroshima at the time.

That's not actually true. They knew, they just didn't care. It was one big science experiment with human guinea pigs.

didnt knowx they also didmt know about the longterm radioactive consequences that would haunt them for generations, but even with modern hindsight its still the best option from an egalitarian standpoint, and you cant blame the world war generation for thinking that wau.

>they knew
Source?

Whcih would lead to mass starvation (lots of loss of life), and lasted longer, meaning occupations of places like Indonesia, Burma, big chunks of China, etc. continue and lead to all the losses of life there, especially as supplies are cut off from Japan proper and the local forces start getting even more expropriative towards the locals.

Well it is a random dA OC
Better?

>>meanwhile no one there even heard of the Soviet plans against Japan
Probably because there were none. They were dismissed and never seriously considered. The Soviet Navy didn't have the capacity.

>This is a stupid argument because it assumes that a land invasion was the only alternative. They could have easily just blockaded Japan.
Yeah, and millions of people would have died. Japan had been on starvation rations for months by that point, down to eating sawdust. The fact that they surrendered exactly when they died prevented millions of deaths due to the massive shipments of food from America. Even then, it just barely staved off a famine and tons of people still died.

>MacArthur's first priority was to set up a food distribution network; following the collapse of the ruling government and the wholesale destruction of most major cities, virtually everyone was starving. Even with these measures, millions of people were still on the brink of starvation for several years after the surrender.[13]

Of course you're mistake is assuming they chose one or the other. They simply did both. And it worked.

>Yeah, and millions of people would have died.

Not if they surrendered. It's totally their fault if things go that way.

I agree, but if you want to force their surrender, then the nukes were probably the best way to do it. They gave the Japanese an easy out so they could make it look like they were surrendering to a super weapon instead of a superior military. it was all about saving face.

>soviets circa 40's
>naval invasion
LMAO

>fukushima still happens
lol

>Not if they surrendered
The Japs have a thing about not surrendering.

>I dont understand politics
The nukes were a direct message to the Soviet Union ya twonk

>imperial japan
>surrender
You really are retarded

mate we had already been blockading them

American Japanese language major here, I ate Hiroshima style okonomiyaki 20 feet away from the bridge that the Enola Gay aimed for, eating it at an establishment overlooking the river where thousands of charred bodies floated alongside the Atomic dome, and across the street from the elementary school that had gotten completely obliterated with all of the children inside of it. Entered the peace museum lying about my nationality to an old lady who then explained to me how she had watched her mother get torn to shred by a giant glass pane that had shattered. I know full and damn well the devastation that was caused there.

The nuking of Japan was necessary for a vital show of American strength and military domination at the inevitable outset of the Cold War, not only did this show of strength intimidate Stalin and the Communists, it also wowed the nations of Western Europe and further bolstered America's leading position in NATO. Other than that, it made operation Olympic unnecessary, a military action that would have been so deadly, so destructive, so awful and brutal in its entirety that not only is the USA still handing out Purple Hearts created in preparation for that invasion, it would also give an impression of American G.I's as the worst and most brutal of conquerors, razing the whole entire country more than it already had, slaughtering or being forced to slaughter a path through a country that even the Mongols could not overcome. It would have been an action so horrible in its breadth that the suffering of Jews and political prisoners in concentration camps, the utter depravity of Soviet troops and their savage rapes of German and Polish women and underage girls, the bombings at Dresden, even the bombings of Tokyo and other air operations over Japan, the Rape of Nanking, none of those could lift a finger to what was in store had America invaded Japan, not even counting the long lasting psychological traumas of all involved.

>starving millions of people is more ethical than blowing up 120k
hippy logic

They won't starve if they surrender.

Inviting Stalin, or one of his ministers, to observe a nuclear test in person would have been a more effective demonstration of the device. There was no need to drop it on actual people.

They would not have surrendered
The japanese goverment would have sat on its ass the entire time until the nations breaks into anarchy
At that point millions have died pointlessly and japan is damaged forever

If the situation was as bad as you describe, then I don't see how they could not have surrendered quickly.

The japanese high command at that point was divided almost completely down the middle between people who sought to end the war and literal autistic retards. The atomic bombs brought hirohito in to end the deadlock. Up until that point he had subscribed to the idea of one last decisive battle with the US. Its unlikely that the deadlock could have been broken before then, considering the sheer imbecility of many parts of the japanese high command.

Because the eperor said no
And most japanese soldiers do what the emperor wants them to do
And the people of japan will starve for a few years until some guys say fuck the emperor and try to over throw him leading to a bloody mass revolt

Them seeing that we had no qualms with using any method on our enemies to assure our victory sent a more clear picture. Also Russians respect strength above all else.

The casualties from an invasion or blockade would have been far more disastrous than 2 atomic bombs. Keep in mind they were weak as piss compared o what they are now. For all anyone else knew we had the capacity to make hundreds more.

A hungry dog is loyal to nobody. If Japanese people were literally starving in the streets, they would have revolted and killed the emperor.

And more of that food would be reserved for the army which would brutalize anyone who revolted. Go read on the horrors of the French revolution. Imagine the average Japanese soldiers response to anyone revolting against their chosen emperor whose voice was too pure to been be heard.

You realize that they'd be going up against the imperial japanese army in that case, right? Killing unarmed starving civillians is their fucking specialty.

Soviet Union invaded the Kurils 6 days after the surrender.

The only thing that kept them from launching an invasion of Hokkaido was bad weather.

>Killing unarmed starving civillians is their fucking specialty.

They might have been fine killing foreigners, but they wouldn't have shot their own people.

You realize that the kuril campaign illustrated how bad the russians were at amphibious assaults, right?

Based on how fucking brutal the hazing was in the japanese army, I beg to differ.

How many battleships did the Soviets possess? The answer is 0.

The Army would been forced to step down. Imagine your own children are starving to death. You'd be forced to negotiate, no matter how stubborn.

>imagine your own children starving to death
Imagine being one of the autists running the IJA. They wouldn't have cared.

Everybody breaks down when it comes to protecting their children.

>Soviet plans against Japan

The U.S. had to give the Soviets ships so they could reoccupy empty and barren Sakhalin Island.

The Soviets wouldn't have been about to do anything against Japan without the U.S. holding their hand.

What about the ones who don't have children? And what about the US' allies who are expecting a speedy end to the war in china, indochina and burma?

And were still fighting in the Kurils until that point, having lost close to 1/3 of the naval vessels involved in the attempt and making damn slow progress in securing the islands.

Hokkaido was enormously better defended and further away form their bases. The idea that they'd mount a successful invasion is laughable.

Big bombs are evil. It's much more humane to starve hundreds of thousands to death over months.

They'll only starve if they drag it out and refuse to negotiate.

>What about the ones who don't have children?

They'll be killed. Once the food riots start, those stubborn individuals who still refuse to negotiate will be the first to be lynched.

You mean like how they hadn't been negotiating on the basis of a blockade since it started in April of 1945?

>They'll only starve if they drag it out and refuse to negotiate
Why are you assuming they wouldn't? The firebombing of most of their cities didn't do much to sway the military. Colonists in china were already starving, after all. You should also remember that Japan was not like the US, in that most of the population wasn't armed. There would be no armed insurrection.

I don't get why people think it so unbelievable for Japan to fight on to the bitter end with no regard for the costs to their own populace when Germany did the exact same thing months before Japan surrendered.

Weeabooism does strange things to a man's brain.

many anons here are teasing an incorrect claim
>atomic bombings caused less deaths then an invasion or blockade
This is true, but the predicating statement that the atomic bombs caused the japanese surrender are being overstated
Imperial japan hoped to push the american naval invasion back of the islands, then utilise the neutral soviets to broker a conditional peace, aiming to maintain the emperors position above all else and possibly keep Korean and Chinese territory.
The soviet invasion of manchuria removed all possibility of this plan succeeding, as no major power could now assist in brokering a peace between two very hostile states. Additionally, japanese defences were largely fixxed on the south to protect against american invasions, and with the soviet entry into the war their defences would have to be weakened and spread further to protect against an invasion from the north.
If the americans hadn't used the atomic bombs, japanese surrender would have likely occurred within a week anyway. In that sense, any atomic bombing or invasion would have been a waste of life. That is easy to say in hindsight however.
Many primary sources have been/will be posted here to dispute this, however the perspective of these sources have to be put into complex. Many senior Japanese officials in the immediate post war atmosphere overstated the role of the atomic bombs in surrender, however this was to save face for the government and these individuals, it is easier to blame a defeat on an enemy super weapon then your own incompetence. Similarly, high nazi officials blamed many other external effects as reasons for the lost war to save the face of themselves, the nation and the Wehrmacht.

>japanese surrender would have occurred within weeks anyways
the us strategic bombing survey (which held a very dim view of the atomic bombs, mind you) established that the atomic bombs were the sole reason for the japanese to surrender as early as they did. it had nothing to do with the russians.

>primary source from americans supports the predominant american-centric perspective of the time
ok user, please use better supporting evidence though
jstor.org/stable/24912294
give this a read

Imagine if you were in charge of Japan in 1945. You've just received confirmation that Hiroshima was completely obliterated by a new super weapon. The natural course of action would be to surrender immediately. But logical men weren't in charge of Japan. The IJA was led by fanatics who insisted that they either can win or face honourable extinction. They were completely unfazed by Nagasaki or the threat of future bombings. It was after days of meetings that the emperor broke protocol and endorsed surrender, ending the deadlock between the IJA and the civilian leadership. Then there was a last minute coup attempt to prevent surrender as well as a post-surrender mutiny.

You're right I'm sure IJA never thought of hedging their bets and putting soldiers families in bases.

The Americans were relatively merciful when it came to the bomb. I can only imagine what the USSR would do to Germany or China to Japan if either country got the bomb first.

>jstor.org/stable/24912294
If i'm remembering correctly, this is mostly just speculation on the part of the author, isn't it? He doesn't have any actual citations from japanese officials saying that the russians were the reasons they left the war? Also, the report isn't just from americans, its from the people they interviewed afterwards. I also wouldn't say that they're just spouting an american-centric perspective, considering that the report literally condemns the use of the atomic bomb and says that the war would have ended in 2-4 months anyways.

I'm not sure why people focus on the US nuke of Japan as that has clear and valid justifications. Something which should be further scrutinized is the mass rape that the Soviets in Germany, as that constitutes a clear war crime and cannot be justified in any way other than
>hurr muh revenge
>war crimes are a spook ;)

Also I can only read the preview of the thing you posted, could you upload the individual pages to imgur or something?

We bombed them twice, not all at once but days later to prove a point. We literally had to drop another radioactive baby killing death machine that was unprecedented in it's destructive power because THEY DIDNT GET THE POINT THE FIRST TIME.

So yes I'm sure the Japanese would experience their first famine in thousands of years and finally overthrow the imperial family that has been in power since 660 BC. That's right 300 years before Alexander the Great.

If you want to argue that it was immoral go for it. But the fanaticism that the Japanese showed all over the pacific would hardly lead us to believe they would surrender 6 months into a blockade.

>Entered the peace museum lying about my nationality to an old lady who then explained to me how she had watched her mother get torn to shred by a giant glass pane that had shattered.

dont be cuck.

my japanese teacher is from hiroshima, and she's married to an american.

his birthday is August 6.

her family has never forgotten his birthday.

Communism has killed over a thousand times the people nukes have

(you)
please stop basing all your opinions from your own countries first hand accounts, it makes you look very incompetent.
Mao Zedong said,"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend" meaning a policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences.
Therefore the hundred flowers campaign was about promoting science and culture, not purging ideological academics.
I'll even call your bluff
>If i'm remembering correctly, this is mostly just speculation on the part of the author, isn't it?
You have never read that source, you maybe read the introduction, if that, and dismissed it because it contradicts your views

>on your countries own first hand accounts
the strategic bombing survey report is literally based off the accounts from other countries
>you never even read the source
kind of hard to when all I can see is the introduction.

docdroid.net/vBheHsr/24912294.pdf
here you go user, it is a brief introduction to the general concept, but should provide you with a good general overview. If it interests you try reading more on the general socio government relations in Imperial japan prior to world war two, that form of collectivism can be very hard to understand from a western perspective, but this same paternal culture lies at the heart of imperial policy relating to surrender. Also keep in mind many works are pieces from their time or are influenced from these pieces, and will often downplay hirohitos role in the war as a means to protect him and justify the retention of his title

>kind of hard to when all I can see is the introduction.

>he doesn't have a subscription to academic database

not even that user youre arguing with lol

what are you even doing here

>subscribing to an academic database when scibhub exists
sci-hub.bz/10.1111/j.1467-7709.1995.tb00656.x

>If i'm remembering correctly, this is mostly just speculation on the part of the author, isn't it?
you never even read the source
>kind of hard to when all I can see is the introduction.
just stop user, lying in itself to avoid changing your opinion is disgusting, goes against Veeky Forums and histiography itself
I would recommend getting access to jstor, even if you have to pay for it, it is a great tool for researching an amazing breadth of topics, not just for history but also social sciences and economics

Chiang Was Right, Mao is shit tier

>subscribing to an academic database when scibhub exists

>not using your uni credentials

you do attend uni, don't you user?

not him, but going to uni to study history is fairly inefficient if you do not want to be an academic.
youtube.com/watch?v=azM6xSTT2I0
If you are studying a degree unrelated to history like me, then use the university's resources to study history as a hobby, that is great. If you use sci-hub to study history as a hobby, that is 99% the same and is great

>if THEY drag out

No you fool, they would starve if the emperor refused.

So meaning millions dying of starvation

You say that as if having half of Japan get raped by slavs and turned into a fucking N. Korea tier shithole is a good thing.

Have you seen Grave of the Fireflies? You wouldn't think starvation is the most humane choice if you did.

Why not drop the bomb directly on the Emperor then?

I don't know why this keeps needing to be repeated, but they won't starve if they surrender quickly.

>America had to show they had a big dick

>Millions

Fucking go troll somewhere else

>they are still trying to do this today

I don't know why this needs to be repeated, but they won't surrender quickly just because they're starving.

>trying
US military ability to roflstomp other countries militaries in both a conventional & unconventional war is ridiculous. I would hate to see what happens if the US ever got tired of the world's shit and just went full imperialism with its citizens supporting it 100%.

The excuse everybody keeps giving is that the emperor won't surrender just because the plebs are starving. So why not just drop the bomb directly on the emperor then? It shouldn't have been too hard to figure out where he was. And even if you miss, he'll definitely surrender once he realizes he's being personally targeted.

Leftists are insufferable. You people are such retarded pseudo-intellectual faggots.

>So why not just drop the bomb directly on the emperor then?
Because then you have a succession issue, and very likely even stronger army control than with the emperor. (As an aside, please learn to spell correctly). There might not even be a coherent government to issue a surrender.

> And even if you miss, he'll definitely surrender once he realizes he's being personally targeted.
You're basing this assertion on what exactly?