Can someone red pill me on the bombings?

Careful with that edge user.

>This quote from Leahy says it all

More from Leahy.

>"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

>Was there really no alternative?

>On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

This. Japan had to surrender, it was absolutely inevitable, and no matter how rabid the populace, they did not have the materiel to continue fighting. America just wanted to show off its new toys.

This. And from having actually lived in Japan I've realized the muh honoraburu fight to the death thing was very much WW2 propaganda, there's plenty of memoirs out there in Japanese (sadly not many are translated) from Japanese soldiers in WW2 and being a former soldier myself, they read like memoirs of any other fighting man not the banzai charging automatons that still make up the Imperial Japanese in the American mind. Like one example which is absolute grade-A bullshit I've seen to justify the bombs is that "the Japanese were training schoolgirls to fight with bamboo spears omg so fanatical". When that STILL happens in Japan, naginata fighting is offered in most middle and high schools and was before the war as well, it's considered a common girl's sport here. Literally just telling the Japanese fine we won't hang the emperor in summer 1945 was all it would have taken.

>Was there really no alternative?

>In 1950 Nitze would recommend a massive military buildup, and in the 1980s he was an arms control negotiator in the Reagan administration. In July of 1945 he was assigned the task of writing a strategy for the air attack on Japan. Nitze later wrote:

>"The plan I devised was essentially this: Japan was already isolated from the standpoint of ocean shipping. The only remaining means of transportation were the rail network and intercoastal shipping, though our submarines and mines were rapidly eliminating the latter as well. A concentrated air attack on the essential lines of transportation, including railroads and (through the use of the earliest accurately targetable glide bombs, then emerging from development) the Kammon tunnels which connected Honshu with Kyushu, would isolate the Japanese home islands from one another and fragment the enemy's base of operations. I believed that interdiction of the lines of transportation would be sufficiently effective so that additional bombing of urban industrial areas would not be necessary.

End yourself, there were many alternatives at the time.

I'm familiar with the roots and all. See I tend to agree with you as far as the cultural stigmas against surrendering in Japan at the time as well as the Emperor cult keeping them in the war
Sure but as someone familiar with Japanese culture you know that the individual thoughts of a Japanese person aren't necessarily ever said especially when there is a group mentality upholding an opposing thought.
What about the Japanese counter to invasion Operation Ketsu-Go, just fighting until the last man? Also, how about the fact that even though we had already bombed practically every square inch of Japan they still hadn't surrendered, despite the limitations on their resources?

I'm not trying to argue for anything, I just have a heard a lot about it and its good to have a sounding board, Veeky Forums.

>alternative to invasion
>good field test for nukes
>just spent $2 billion 1940s money on these bombs
>really hated the nips at this point

All you need to understand in order to start developing your own opinions on the bombing is what the US was thinking at the time.

>What about the Japanese counter to invasion Operation Ketsu-Go, just fighting until the last man?

Again, is literal propaganda.

> Also, how about the fact that even though we had already bombed practically every square inch of Japan they still hadn't surrendered, despite the limitations on their resources?

Again, you bombed the shit out of them, into the dust, they were kicking and screaming still and you evaporated them. It's not about the fact that they didn't surrender, most nations need that little extra kick to force a surrender, nukes are not a 'little extra kick'.

There is really no argument that cannot be made from ignorance in this regard. You've been redpilled, enjoy arguing with Americans who refuse to see it.

>"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

>"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

>"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

I knew Eisenhower would have liked to end it without using the bomb. But I curious, what evidence wish there that Japan was on the edge of surrender and if we didn't bomb them how long would they remain "on the edge"? Also, im actually interested is Ketsu Go being propaganda do you have a source?

The Japanese had sent their flagship Yamato without air cover in a last ditch attempt to just do anything.

They wouldn't have sent Yamato out to die in a pointless operation if they had anything left to fight with

I don't know about that, there were still armies in Japan and I don't think Japan was afraid to starve their people a bit more if it meant not fighting since they had been doing for a majority of the war

>Japan had lost all of it's ground and the only thing left was a ground invasion, they were done.

Just a little ground invasion of a major military power.

I'd definitely recommend reading memoirs from Harry Truman and Robert Oppenheimer, both have pretty similar opinions that the atomic bombings needed to be done but they felt sick to their stomachs in doing so.

Oppenheimer in particular is an interesting story. he saw the Hiroshima bombing as necessary but was absolutely disgusted by the Nagasaki bombing, seeing it as unnecessary and their point was already proven. He had a meeting with Truman that didn't go well, where Oppenheimer resigned from all government work feeling he had too much blood on his hands.

In the end, the argument does hold up that many more soldiers and civilians alike would die in a ground invasion. It's also worth noting that by 1945, everyone was just fucking sick and tired of war, making the option to just press the easy button and win it all the more tempting.

>Dropping thousands of bombs and incendiaries on Tokyo killing hundreds of thousands of people is just fine
>Dropping one really big bomb is bad

>End yourself

Who was that directed at?

I feel like for how much US propaganda is being used in this thread to explain US logic, people are ignoring the Japanese Military Government propaganda machine that was equally as pervasive. For example, many Japanese were surprised that unconditional surrender did not mean the total annihilation of Japan and its people, this definition was most likely a result of propaganda

>In the end, the argument does hold up that many more soldiers and civilians alike would die in a ground invasion.

Kek. Not at fucking all you retard. That's war, that's what you got yourself into. Allies had beaten Japan - that's the fucking point you, and every other retard for the nulkes cannot see - they were overkill.

>what evidence wish there that Japan was on the edge of surrender and if we didn't bomb them how long would they remain "on the edge"?

That's not the point, are you aware of the idea of being a sore winner? That's essentially what America did, they developed a new toy towards the end of the war and were not able to use it. When people such as MacArthur who openly criticize the uselessness of the nukes it's pretty dam fucking clear that they were not needed. Leahy, who commanded the US fleet is also in agreement, how can you argue? Your two leaders who actually won the war tell you that they were not needed to finish it and is extreme overkill, you cannot argue. Their opinions will always, always have more weight than yours.

>actually interested is Ketsu Go being propaganda do you have a source?

That's not what I said? I said the banzai aspect of your Japanese is literal propaganda, yeah sure man, literally every Japanese in 1945 Japan subscribed to the Bushido code to an insane degree and were willing to suicide, even though if you actually watched any accounts from actual Japanese of the time you would know it's a very, very different story.

The fucking population knew they could not win the war.

Pic related is not how you finish a war, by leaving after effects felt by the population, simply by being born in Japan.

Are you aware that using the nukes was a decision taken away from the American military and put solely on the president? Almost all important personnel of the time voiced that it wasn't needed.

>Not at fucking all you retard

>Demand unconditional surrender
>No!
>Drop one nuke
>Demand unconditional surrender again
>NO!
>Drop second nuke
>Unconditional surrender achieved
Literally fuck off.

It was justified, it was either a few hundred thousand dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki or millions dead in an invasion of the Home Islands. To give you an idea of how much the Japaneses were willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child, there was actually a semi-coup attempt to stop the Emperor from delivering his surrender speech after Fat Man had been dropped.

In my personal opinion all gloves are off once you start a war of conquest like the Japanese did. The US was justified in using any means that would work to defeat the Japanese.

No I'm not American.

VERY bad post user

>we beat them and they won't surrender
>w-w-w-w-what do we do??!?!?
>I R So scared of dem japonks
>NUKE NUKE NUKE
Really?

You're literally retarded, you can only use the fact that the bombs were dropped and achieved surrender in your argument, that's literally all you have. That's fine, that does in no way justify the bombs when the people who ran the war, the pones to actually beat Japan, the ones who actually studied Japan and Japanese Culture were of a mind that they could have finished it without nukes.

Like, you probably could argue Hiroshima was necessary, some do, and that's actually an arguable stance. Nagasaki though? Kek.

>>Unconditional surrender achieved
Kek, you literally do not know how history went down. America asked for unconditional surrender and the stepping down of the Emperor, Japan surrendered, on the condition that the emperor stayed.

It was a literal, ironic fuck-up on America's part. The worst thing? Probably not even a fuck-up, but an actual test of the nukes.

>The US was justified in using any means that would work to defeat the Japanese.
This is what you don't understand though. The Japanese were already defeated when the bombs were dropped as is the opinion of everyone who was actually involved in fighting the war.

>the ones who actually studied Japan and Japanese Culture were of a mind that they could have finished it without nukes
You mean fucking weebs like you?

If Japan had nukes what would they have done with them?

Hehehhe yeah man, ad hom is how you refute the points xD.

"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

- BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE

Bullshit. They weren't done fighting and still making demands regarding their surrender. They lost all rights to negotiate the nature of their surrender the moment they engaged in a war of conquest.

You know 731 is free and clear, because America bought their research, right? It cannot be used in an argument against them, yes it was disgusting - do you also know pretty much everything we know about frostbite and treating it is thanks to them?

You also know that AMerican war-crimes are still kept under wraps? We literally do not know what America got up to in WWII, in 2006 secret files were leaked about WWII detailing just how much Americans raped their allies during WWII.

There are American leaders who say had Germany won the war they would be the ones on trial at Nuremberg for the war crimes they authorized. America won, dropped the nukes were probably the biggest war crimes - but totally justified as they won the overall war. Had Axis won the war how do you think we would be talking about the nukes right now?

>one quote from a nobody

Meanwhile

>There are voices which assert that the bomb should never have been used at all. I cannot associate myself with such ideas. ... I am surprised that very worthy people—but people who in most cases had no intention of proceeding to the Japanese front themselves—should adopt the position that rather than throw this bomb, we should have sacrificed a million American and a quarter of a million British lives
- Churchill

>If the atomic bomb had not been used, evidence like that I have cited points to the practical certainty that there would have been many more months of death and destruction on an enormous scale
- Karl Compton Taylor, Ph.D., Manhattan Project Physicist

>But they also showed a meanness and viciousness towards their enemies equal to the Huns'. Genghis Khan and his hordes could not have been more merciless. I have no doubts about whether the two atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary. Without them, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Malaya and Singapore, and millions in Japan itself, would have perished.
- Lee Kuan Yew

>We were going after military targets. No point in slaughtering civilians for the mere sake of slaughter. Of course there is a pretty thin veneer in Japan, but the veneer was there. It was their system of dispersal of industry. All you had to do was visit one of those targets after we'd roasted it, and see the ruins of a multitude of houses, with a drill press sticking up through the wreckage of every home. The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions of war ... men, women, children. We knew we were going to kill a lot of women and kids when we burned [a] town. Had to be done.
- General Curtis LeMay

Literally fuck off, weebshit. Your precious East Aryans got what they were coming to them and it was the right thing to do.

Nothing, they would've been shot down by the USAF before dropping anything

t. user of the internet.

Heheh, I am still going to take the words of the people who actually fought the war, over yours, mate.

xD

I literally have no idea what you people do, like, when ever I have these arguments I never argue subjectively, like you're doing. All I do is post an opinion expressed by generals soldiers and actual people involved in the war.

Literally cannot be denied.

>Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

The militarists, which controlled the government, weren't going to surrender even with the retention of the Emperor until after the bombs had been dropped.

>When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been?
Also this is wrong. MacArthur was told a few days before it happened and had no qualms.

>Neither MacArthur nor Nimitz ever communicated to Truman any change of mind about the need for invasion or expressed reservations about using the bombs. When first informed about their imminent use only days before Hiroshima, MacArthur responded with a lecture on the future of atomic warfare and even after Hiroshima strongly recommended that the invasion go forward. Nimitz, from whose jurisdiction the atomic strikes would be launched, was notified in early 1945. 'This sounds fine,' he told the courier, 'but this is only February. Can't we get one sooner?'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Support

>Literally fuck off, weebshit. Your precious East Aryans got what they were coming to them and it was the right thing to do.

Literally every single one of those quotes is a biased one against the Japanese, and is actual propaganda. Hilarious you think it speaks again it. Here is another quote via Churchill.

>"I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

You actually are using someone directly involved in the creation the bomb as evidence? Really? That's directly biased right there. Of course someone who was directly involved in the creation of the atomic bomb will be all for dropping the bomb.

You are literally using a quote out of context also, LeMay is saying what he did in the context of firebombing, which is actually justified for the winning of the war, nukes however were not. Great post, keep it up.

>The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

But that was my point? The Japanese lost all right to make demands regarding the nature of their surrender, the moment they started a war of conquest. If the US desired unconditional surrender, they had a right to pursue that in any way they saw fit (is my opinion).

Besides that, I do not see why the people who were actually involved in the war are particularly more entitled to an opinion regarding the subject than I am.

It was a war crime and probably not necessary in hindsight. Furthermore, if the Japanese were white the bombs would never have been dropped.

t. actual Chinese person whose grandfather's live was probably saved by the bombs

>Furthermore, if the Japanese were white the bombs would never have been dropped.
Except for the fact that we were gonna nuke Berlin off the face of the earth if it weren't for the pesky fact they gave up before we'd completed the bomb.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Support

You should read that wiki article. Literally the only argument is

>invading would have cost more lives than the nukes

The counter-argument, which is the one held by all the generals of the time was Japan was beaten and cutting supply lines even further would have hastened their surrender. I mean, people compare the Japanese to the Mongols, but at least the Mongols knew how to use diplomacy, unlike Americans.

That quote you used is a literal opinion of a historian, it has no fact - it's an actual opinion.

>if the Japanese were white the bombs would never have been dropped
How do you figure? They were originally intended for Berlin but they weren't finished yet.

Are you literally retarded? Japan surrendered under the condition that the emperor remained intact, after the nukes.

That's a literal conditional surrender, it's not unconditional.

>Besides that, I do not see why the people who were actually involved in the war are particularly more entitled to an opinion regarding the subject than I am.

Kek, are you literally saying your mind is the same of 1945 Admiral Leahy? And MacArthur?

Except that's wrong. They surrendered, and the Americans decided not to depose the emperor. That's different than it being a condition.

If the British had built the bomb and Churchill went full retard, maybe. But the Americans would never want to nuke Berlin, that's just pissing off the USSR for no good reason.

The Japanese were far more dehumanized than the Germans as well, so there was little debate in dropping the bomb. I'm sure there would be much more debate about atomic bombing of cities if one had been used in Europe.

>and the Americans decided not to depose the emperor
Mhm, funny how the generals say had they given the chance to leave the emperor in tact the Japanese would have surrendered, the only thing you can say to that is actually 'no'.

>the elimination "for all time of the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest"

That's a term of their surrender, Hirohito remains in tact- their surrender was supposedly unconditional, except it was conditional in the remaining of the emperor, the one who embarked on the war, the one who in his speech to Japan admitted he started the war.

>inb4 hirohito was a puppet.

blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/10/04/atomic-bomb-used-nazi-germany/

Pretty much all the objections ever raised within the military about using a bomb on Germany were either

A) The war will be over before we've got a bomb
B) We don't want to risk a B-29 getting downed in Europe.

Nobody seems particularly concerned about dropping a nuke on Berlin in any sort of humanitarian way.

>Nobody seems particularly concerned about dropping a nuke on Berlin in any sort of humanitarian way.

You understand this proves literally everything I am saying (I am the one arguing the nukes are not justified, also not the user you are quoting, just giving my 2 cents).

To make it easy I will link back to one of my first posts so I do not have to repeat myself.

>Evaporating civilians when a nation has been totally defeated as it won't stand down is not the correct thing to do. It was an experiment, it's not secret, many generals opposed it, many call it openly for what it was - an experiment.
>Using nukes is not wrong, it was the fucking context in which they were used that was totally wrong.

Nuking Berlin at that time would have had some strategic benefit, nuking Japan had literally no significance in ending the war past flexing muscles and testing out a shiny new toy they just spent 2 billion on.

>maybe
There is no maybe. It was the explicit purpose for the Manhattan Project: To gain nuclear weapons before Germany and use them against them. Had Germany not fallen before August 1945, it would be /pol/tards crying over the nukes instead of the weeb trash.

From 1942 to 1945, the US air force conduced a literal genocide on Japanese cities with firebombs
The bombings were specifically aimed at killing civilians en mass, and millions died during these 3 years
All because Japan had attacked an US base without killing any civilian
Totally disporportionate response

>from 1942
>The Bombing of Yawata on the night of 15/16 June 1944 was the first air raid on the Japanese home islands conducted by United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) strategic bombers during World War II.

Also the Japanese had no problem bombing civvies in China (with chemical and bacteriological weapons even) so why should the US?

Bullshit senpai
This was the first raid

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_Raid

That was neither aimed at civilians nor carried firebombs. Not to mention being very small and being done only for propaganda purposes.

The Japanese would have bombed American cities too if they could. In fact they intended too even building weapons designed specifically for the task.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine

>The I-400 class was the brainchild of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleet. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he conceived the idea of taking the war to the United States mainland by making aerial attacks against cities along the U.S. western and eastern seaboards using submarine-launched naval aircraft.

I think there's a good amount of consideration that the Bushido as most people think of it was over exaggerated and certainly the personal dairies of soldiers reveal that. However, I think it's important to remember that Japan is largely a collectivist nation where personal thought and wants are constantly relinquished for the majority thought and especially the orders of superiors. So while many are saying that the diaries reveal that Japan truly was on the edge of defeat I disagree and say that using the diaries as the proof overlooks deeply ingrained aspects of Japanese culture as well as the Shintoism turned into a national cult all centered around the Emperor under whom (on paper at least) the military solely had to answer to.

>firebombing is justified and nukes aren't because of arbitrary reasons I just came up with

>How dare the US not use a more humane method of forcing japanese surrender after all the atrocities JPN committed in China and south-east Asia!

Wasn't he General that said he would have been on trial if the allies lost talking about not allowing German SS to surender?

>arbitrary
If you say so. Well I mean, again, they are not my words. They are the words of Fleet Admiral William Daniel Leahy.

>"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons"
>the successful bombing with conventional weapons"

Firebombing removed their ability to war, it destroyed their factories, it cut their supply lines, if they have no ability to war what purpose does a nuke have past flexing muscles?

Taking no prisoners is the thing yes. But you don't believe they were simply shot once in the head at the end of the battle, do you? All we know about what happened is the General thinks he would be on trial at Nuremberg, we do not know specifics.

>nukes are humane
You heard it here folks.

Further severing their supply lines to force a surrender
>not humane
Giving the option of allowing the Emperor to remain in tact
>not humane

You're a moron. You haven't read the thread, and I am about to repeat myself AGAIN. Do you actually buy into American propaganda of every Japanese willing to die?

Dropping nukes was not a military decision, although most of the military voiced against dropping the nukes, as they were not needed - it was a useless endeavour past an experiment. The president took that power out of the people's hand who actually won the war and disregarded any advice. Read the thread, do some research.

It was a literal fuck up, and there is a reason why even still today your president is attempting to apologize, it's not because lol Barak, it's because dropping the nukes was one of the greatest atrocities of this age. And it's not because for some reason you people think, it's only the nuke. It's the goddamn context they were dropped in.

2,000 characters in 5 minutes.

>he thinks a naval blockade would have killed less people

>he thinks they didn't already have a successful naval blockade
>he thinks after Germany had been defeated and Japan had lost all it's ground and sent its Naval flagship to die they are still capable of effective warring
xD

>he thinks that a sustained naval embargo of a nation of 100 million that isn't self sufficient in food would end with less than 200,000 dead

>actual american commanders who spearheaded the war say that it was unnecessary
>people who say it was necessary - 1 butthurt brit, a butthurt singaporean

>he actually thinks in 1945 every Japanese citizen subscribed to the Bushido code and was willing to seppuku at the Emperor's command
xD that's literal propaganda, bro.

>he thinks dropping nukes and evaporting the enemies is the only way to force a surrender
xD
>he thinks it's anything but AMericans testing their new 2 billion dollar toy
xD

You simply do not spend 2 billion on something and don't use it.

>actual american commanders who spearheaded the war

So, Truman, LeMay, Stimson, or Arnold?

you cannot fight a war without supplies or materiel numbnuts. Doesn't matter how collectivist you are.

All of this. Every word

>the true destructive power wouldn't be seared into peoples minds and they would have probably ended up being used during the cold war.

Joseph Stalin was reportedly unimpressed by the A-bombs when briefed on the damage reports (apparently a significant number of strategic assets like railroad stations were still operational). It seems what the bombs were good for was just killing civilians.

This as well. Pro nuke fags BTFOd. Just like Hiro and Naga. Now get off the interwebz. Also user, great job. You teached a few idiots real stuff. Too bad they won't learn cuz they are too weak to admit they are wrong

quints don't lie

>Autism speaks.

He was unimpressed because they had a mole in the Manhattan project so he already knew everything about it which meant the Soviet bomb wouldn't be too far behind. They just needed the infrastructure to build one.

Apparently much of the American top military leaders thought it was unnecessary at this point to win the war anyways.

They only stated it well after the bombs had been dropped. It seems to be closer to regret than anything.

Technically, they weren't needed - but it would have taken years and millions more deaths to force Japan to surrender, either through starvation due to the US submarine campaign or in bloody street by street and mile by mile fighting as the US slaughtered their way to Tokyo.

Ignorant fucking gook.

They were offered terms of surrender, but they refused

>other people did bad things so were of the hook right?

>we are really not as bad as the people we are claiming to be better than
>srs