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A good article on Truman wrongly using nuclear weapons

Craig234 said:
The Truth about Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Common Dreams Views
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The truth is that there was a major coup attempt to try and continue the war even after both cities were nuked.

A conventional invasion would have been a massive bloodbath.

Starving the Japanese wouldn’t have worked because the fascist dictatorship’s Tripp’s would have happily seized food from the civilian populace to stay in the field.

The Soviets did not have the naval capability to launch a large scale invasion of Japan. Maybe they could have taken Hokkaido, but even that is a stretch.

The truth is that Truman did the right thing.
 
1. Brits were actively helping the US to build the bomb, if it weren't for the Brits we wouldn't have had the bomb until after the war. You can go online and find photos of British scientists working at Los Alamos.

2. All four parties involved had a nuke program, Britain, Soviets, US and Japan. Nobody knew how far Japan was along with their nuke.

3. Potsdam declaration said two important things

a. "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

(this is the allies saying "we have the nuke and will use it")

b. The second thing is what wasn't said. No mention was made of the Emperor, in diplomatic speak this meant that the Japanese Emperor could stay.

Potsdam Declaration - Wikipedia

Ten days before Hiroshima millions of leaflets with the Potsdam Declaration were dropped all over Japan. By this time the US had powerful AM radio transmitters that could reach all of Japan and the announcers told listeners about the Declaration. Yes it was illegal for the Japanese to listen to US radio or read the leaflets but everyone in Japan knew of the Declaration.

The Japanese decided to "kill it with silence" a Japanese negotiating tactic. They didn't respond to the Potsdam Declaration.

Hiroshima was nuked.

Also when the Emperor finally declared he was going to surrender, military officers attempted a coup, they hoped to imprison the emperor and continue the war. The coup was defeated.

Also when Germany was defeated they sent all of their processed Uranium to Japan via submarine, like 100s of kilos of the stuff. The German uboaters decided to surrender to US forces and the two Japanese officers on board committed ritual suicide. Much of the captured uranium was used on the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

August 1945:

News of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima reaches Ottawa just before noon on August 6, 1945. As a member of the Combined Policy Committee, Howe expects it. In a prepared statement, he says:

''It is a particular pleasure for me to announce that Canadian scientists have played an intimate part, and have been associated in an effective way, with this great scientific development.''

Three days later, on August 9, Nagasaki is bombed.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — When a captured Nazi U-boat arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., toward the end of World War II, the American public was never told the significance of what was on board.

The German submarine was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, ingredients for an atomic bomb, bound for Japan. Two Japanese officers on board were allowed to commit suicide.

Two months later, in the New Mexico desert, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, a prelude to the obliteration of two Japanese cities.

Unknown to many of the people who built those bombs, not to mention the public, Japan was scrambling to build its own nuclear weapon.


New Details Emerge About Japan'''s Wartime A-Bomb Program - Los Angeles Times


A Canadian scientist working on the bomb at Los Alamos accidentally irradiated himself. He died of radiation poisoning.

When Truman told Stalin America had the bomb, Stalin said, "Good, I hope you use it on them."
 
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AmNat said:
The entire war was unnecessary. Certainly, the refusal to accept Japanese surrender offers was purely a matter of FDR and Truman's desire for progressive world domination.
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The US was not obligated to allow the people who had tortured American POWs(amongst numerous others), conducting vast numbers of atrocities across Asia and had tried to launch a bioweapon attack on San Francisco off easily.....or at all.
 
Common Dreams said:
There was no discussion of Japan's near collapse weeks before the attacks. In the summer of 1945, the country was suffering under a full blockade. Increasingly desperate surrender feelers were being communicated by Japanese diplomats, of which Truman was well aware, but you would never know that from the program.
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Japan did not make any attempt to surrender until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.


Common Dreams said:
We also do not learn that the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that Japan would have likely surrendered, even without the atomic bombings, before the U.S. invasion planned for late that autumn.
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Well, it's hard to see how it's really relevant to anything.


Common Dreams said:
Instead we’re told that the "enemy showed no willingness to surrender,” and "few doubted that defeating the Japanese could drag on for another 12 to 18 months.” In fact, by July 1945, many American military analysts, including leading generals, doubted this.
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Aside from Ike (who no one took seriously), which military analysts doubted it?


Common Dreams said:
Nor did we hear in the documentary that several top Truman advisers believed that Japan would quit the war if the United States modified its "unconditional surrender" demand by signaling that the emperor could remain on the throne. There was no admission in the program that after dropping the bombs we allowed the emperor to stay on anyway. What if we had done that earlier?
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Normally it is impossible to know how history would play out if different choices had been made. But not in this case.

Since Japan was only willing to contemplate surrender under such circumstances after August 9, it is safe to say that making an earlier guarantee for the Emperor would have made absolutely no difference.

Although, really, what would it matter even if it would have made a difference? History happened the way it did, and there is no going back now.


Common Dreams said:
Hiroshima was repeatedly referred to as a "military target" or even a "military city"—a key U.S. claim going back to August 1945 when Truman labeled it a "military base"—even though Japanese soldiers only represented about one in ten deaths there
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There were 20,000 Japanese soldiers killed at Hiroshima. Total deaths ranged from 90,000 to 140,000.


Common Dreams said:
A total of about 150 Japanese military personnel died in Nagasaki.
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Some large weapon factories were destroyed however.


Common Dreams said:
You'd never know from Wallace that many of the historians and others who support the use of the first bomb feel that the bombing of Nagasaki, just three days after Hiroshima, is indefensible, perhaps even a war crime.
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Nutcases have all sorts of weird views.

Japan was still refusing to surrender, and we had every right to continue attacking them until they surrendered.


Common Dreams said:
reduces all questions about the necessity of dropping the bombs to "hindsight."
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Rightly so. These claims about how "Japan would have surrendered regardless" are all hindsight.

When the A-bombs were actually being dropped, no one knew what it would take to make Japan surrender.


Common Dreams said:
nor did few military experts expect a million U.S. casualties in such an invasion.
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The projected casualties from a D-day scale invasion of Kyushu and then a second D-day scale invasion of Tokyo Bay were horrific. There were credible predictions of a million casualties from these invasions.


Common Dreams said:
Having successfully tested the bomb, and with more ready to be quickly assembled, there is only a slim chance that the invasion, though well-planned, would ever have happened. There is no way Truman would have ordered tens of thousands of American soldiers to their deaths once he had atomic bombs at the ready.
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This seems to be a tacit admission that the A-bombs did save lives.

However, had Japan continued to refuse to surrender, the invasion would have gone ahead as planned.


Common Dreams said:
The historical debate thus has always rested on the issue of whether Truman should have waited another few days, or weeks, for Japan to capitulate before ordering the bomb dropped over the center of two cities, killing more than 200,000, an estimated 95% of them civilians.
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I doubt many historians would be silly enough to debate such a thing. Why would the US pointlessly hold off attacking for a few days?

The Nagasaki bomb was not dropped over the center of a city by the way.

Estimates of the total number of A-bomb deaths range from 150,000 to 200,000. And 20,000 of those deaths were Japanese soldiers. Large weapons factories were severely damaged as well.
 
AmNat said:
The entire war was unnecessary. Certainly, the refusal to accept Japanese surrender offers was purely a matter of FDR and Truman's desire for progressive world domination.
Click to expand...
Japan did not make any surrender offers until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

FDR was dead by that point. However, history records that Truman accepted Japan's surrender on August 14.
 
swing_voter said:
1. Brits were actively helping the US to build the bomb, if it weren't for the Brits we wouldn't have had the bomb until after the war. You can go online and find photos of British scientists working at Los Alamos.

2. All four parties involved had a nuke program, Britain, Soviets, US and Japan. Nobody knew how far Japan was along with their nuke.

3. Potsdam declaration said two important things

a. "We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action. The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

(this is the allies saying "we have the nuke and will use it")

b. The second thing is what wasn't said. No mention was made of the Emperor, in diplomatic speak this meant that the Japanese Emperor could stay.

Potsdam Declaration - Wikipedia

Ten days before Hiroshima millions of leaflets with the Potsdam Declaration were dropped all over Japan. By this time the US had powerful AM radio transmitters that could reach all of Japan and the announcers told listeners about the Declaration. Yes it was illegal for the Japanese to listen to US radio or read the leaflets but everyone in Japan knew of the Declaration.

The Japanese decided to "kill it with silence" a Japanese negotiating tactic. They didn't respond to the Potsdam Declaration.

Hiroshima was nuked.

Also when the Emperor finally declared he was going to surrender, military officers attempted a coup, they hoped to imprison the emperor and continue the war. The coup was defeated.

Also when Germany was defeated they sent all of their processed Uranium to Japan via submarine, like 100s of kilos of the stuff. The German uboaters decided to surrender to US forces and the two Japanese officers on board committed ritual suicide. Much of the captured uranium was used on the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

August 1945:

News of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima reaches Ottawa just before noon on August 6, 1945. As a member of the Combined Policy Committee, Howe expects it. In a prepared statement, he says:

''It is a particular pleasure for me to announce that Canadian scientists have played an intimate part, and have been associated in an effective way, with this great scientific development.''

Three days later, on August 9, Nagasaki is bombed.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — When a captured Nazi U-boat arrived at Portsmouth, N.H., toward the end of World War II, the American public was never told the significance of what was on board.

The German submarine was carrying 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, ingredients for an atomic bomb, bound for Japan. Two Japanese officers on board were allowed to commit suicide.

Two months later, in the New Mexico desert, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, a prelude to the obliteration of two Japanese cities.

Unknown to many of the people who built those bombs, not to mention the public, Japan was scrambling to build its own nuclear weapon.


New Details Emerge About Japan'''s Wartime A-Bomb Program - Los Angeles Times


A Canadian scientist working on the bomb at Los Alamos accidentally irradiated himself. He died of radiation poisoning.

When Truman told Stalin America had the bomb, Stalin said, "Good, I hope you use it on them."
Click to expand...

The first nukes were built in Oak Ridge TN. They were shipped to Los Alamos for detonation.

Interesting enough though, the Japanese had developed a submarine aircraft carrier and had been in a position to use it to carry out a biological attack on the US homeland but decided against it. I guess they were content with their multiple biological attacks on China instead.
 
AmNat said:
The entire war was unnecessary. Certainly, the refusal to accept Japanese surrender offers was purely a matter of FDR and Truman's desire for progressive world domination.
Click to expand...

Nonsense.
 
zyzygy said:
Hindsight is easy. If you were Truman what would you have done?
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Used restraint in using such weapons to needlessly destroy cities. If I felt a need to demonstrate them, it could be done without mass killing. I'd like to think I would either have not used them, or used them in a non-lethal demonstration. The Japanese were asking for peace on the terms we eventually met; we should have accepted.
 
Craig234 said:
Used restraint in using such weapons to needlessly destroy cities. If I felt a need to demonstrate them, it could be done without mass killing. I'd like to think I would either have not used them, or used them in a non-lethal demonstration. The Japanese were asking for peace on the terms we eventually met; we should have accepted.
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When did the Japanese ask for peace?
 
AmNat said:
The entire war was unnecessary.
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I agree. Japan had no reason to pursue the course of action it did. Examining the chain of events that led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor does however reveal how insane the Japanese national leadership was.
 
Toggle Almendro said:
Japan did not make any surrender offers until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

FDR was dead by that point. However, history records that Truman accepted Japan's surrender on August 14.
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Via neutral countries, Japan had communicated multiple peace offers under which they would have ceded territory they presently controlled. Whether you wish to call this "surrender" or not is a semantic question.
 
Jredbaron96 said:
I agree. Japan had no reason to pursue the course of action it did. Examining the chain of events that led Japan to attack Pearl Harbor does however reveal how insane the Japanese national leadership was.
Click to expand...

You're the captain of a ship. A lifeboat shows up with one survivor, a (mostly) intact corpse, and another corpse stripped to the bone. The survivor informs you that the third man was a vicious cannibal who tried to kill the others. They had to kill him in self-defense, and once he was dead . . . well they had to eat. Later on, you're told, the second man died in his sleep.

Whose sanity should you be concerned with? The survivor's or the dead men's?
 
Craig234 said:
Used restraint in using such weapons to needlessly destroy cities. If I felt a need to demonstrate them, it could be done without mass killing. I'd like to think I would either have not used them, or used them in a non-lethal demonstration.
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Not using your weapons on the enemy is a great way to lose a war.

Truman had a different strategy: try to win the war by relentlessly smashing the enemy until they surrender.


Craig234 said:
The Japanese were asking for peace on the terms we eventually met; we should have accepted.
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That is incorrect. Japan did not ask for peace until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

We flatly denied their request when they proposed terms, preparing instead to nuke them a third time and then invade if they still didn't relent.

Luckily for Japan, a few days later they decided to relent and surrender unconditionally.



zyzygy said:
When did the Japanese ask for peace?
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Japan first asked for peace on August 10, after both A-bombs had already been dropped.



AmNat said:
Via neutral countries, Japan had communicated multiple peace offers under which they would have ceded territory they presently controlled. Whether you wish to call this "surrender" or not is a semantic question.
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That offer was first presented on August 10.

The second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki the day before, on August 9.

Unfortunately Japan did not use a time machine to present their surrender offer, so Truman did not receive their surrender offer until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.
 
Toggle Almendro said:
That offer was first presented on August 10.
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The Japanese government made peace overtures via the Holy See in January 1945, which were communicated to the FDR regime without effect. This is well documented.
 
Toggle Almendro said:
Not using your weapons on the enemy is a great way to lose a war.
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That's an absurd statement, raising questions of dishonesty. No one said not to use any weapons.

Truman had a different strategy: try to win the war by relentlessly smashing the enemy until they surrender.
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It's wrong to commit atrocities, especially needlessly. Firebombing cities was wrong. And the nuclear weapons, dropped as Japan was ready to surrender, were wrong. Top generals said so. The evidence suggests the cities killed were killed as the price of showing off to Stalin.

That is incorrect. Japan did not ask for peace until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.
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Read some books.

We flatly denied their request when they proposed terms, preparing instead to nuke them a third time and then invade if they still didn't relent.
Click to expand...

Their term was that the emperor remain emperor - a term we could accept, that did not justify the mass killing, a term we DID accept. What I've read is that we did not have any more nukes ready, and would not for some time.
 
AmNat said:
You're the captain of a ship. A lifeboat shows up with one survivor, a (mostly) intact corpse, and another corpse stripped to the bone. The survivor informs you that the third man was a vicious cannibal who tried to kill the others. They had to kill him in self-defense, and once he was dead . . . well they had to eat. Later on, you're told, the second man died in his sleep.

Whose sanity should you be concerned with? The survivor's or the dead men's?
Click to expand...

I'm sure you thought you were making some kind of point with that. If only you were as coherent as you think you are.

In reality the Japanese went to war with the United States born purely out of emotional, not rational, decision making; inventing American insults and perceiving threats when there were none.

Japan's own leadership was to blame for this; Admiral Nagano wanted to scrap Yamamoto's plan to attack the US and direct Japanese efforts towards the Dutch, Yamamoto threw a fit and threatened to resign. It wasn't until Nagano agreed on the decision to attack American that Yamamoto calmed down, despite the fact that Nagano was Yamamoto's superior officer and should have just told him to shut up and color. Nagano would later be put into a headlock by his drunken subordinate Admiral Yamaguchi after Nagano threatened to withdraw Carrier Division 2 from the attack on Pearl Harbor.

You have tried in the past to portray Japan's actions that led to war with the US as necessary and the only acceptable response to American "aggression", but in reality this was the behavior of egotists drunk with nationalist pride and delusions of grandeur. It is unfortunate that due to their arrogance and ignorance that hundreds of thousands of their own citizens would die as a result of their actions.
 
AmNat said:
The Japanese government made peace overtures via the Holy See in January 1945, which were communicated to the FDR regime without effect. This is well documented.
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That is incorrect. The Japanese government did not present any peace overtures to the US, by any route or through any intermediaries whatsoever, until August 10, 1945.
 
Craig234 said:
That's an absurd statement, raising questions of dishonesty. No one said not to use any weapons.
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It looked to me like you were proposing harmless demonstrations instead of attacking military targets.


Craig234 said:
It's wrong to commit atrocities, especially needlessly.
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Attacking a military target is hardly an atrocity.


Craig234 said:
Firebombing cities was wrong.
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The firebombing destroyed many weapon factories.


Craig234 said:
And the nuclear weapons, dropped as Japan was ready to surrender, were wrong.
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Japan did not decide to surrender until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.


Craig234 said:
Top generals said so.
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Only Ike said so during the war. And he only told a single person (Stimson).

After Stimson told him that he was an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, Ike kept quiet and never shared his ideas about Japanese surrender with anyone else until many years later, after his second term as president had ended and he was retired from political life.

But even if Ike had actually been convincing when he presented his arguments to Stimson, it was too late to stop the A-bombs from being used at that point. The final orders to use the A-bombs had already been approved and sent out to the military, and Truman had left Potsdam and was preparing to set sail back to Washington. He was still at sea when Hiroshima was bombed.


Craig234 said:
The evidence suggests the cities killed were killed as the price of showing off to Stalin.
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The evidence proves that the cities were destroyed to undermine Japan's ability to resist our coming invasion.


Craig234 said:
Read some books.
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I've read them.


Craig234 said:
Their term was that the emperor remain emperor - a term we could accept, that did not justify the mass killing, a term we DID accept.
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Japan's term was that Hirohito would retain unlimited dictatorial power as emperor.

We flatly rejected that request and told them that Hirohito would be subordinate to MacArthur.


Craig234 said:
What I've read is that we did not have any more nukes ready, and would not for some time.
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There were already implosion assemblies waiting on Tinian. All they needed were fissile cores to put in them.

The next plutonium core was just leaving Los Alamos on August 11 when the government halted the shipment to give Japan some breathing room since they had just finally offered to surrender. It made it as far as the Los Alamos parking lot before being recalled. Had it been shipped, and had the war continued, the next A-bomb would have been dropped around August 17-18.

On August 14 Truman was getting ready to order the next bombing to go forward when he finally got word that Japan surrendered. Had the war continued and the core been shipped on the 14th, the new date for the bombing would have been August 20-21.

The next A-bomb target would have been Tokyo, to give the Japanese government a front row view of an A-bombing.
 
Craig234 said:
The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It | The Nation
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The Kyūjō incident (宮城事件, Kyūjō Jiken) was an attempted military coup d'état in the Empire of Japan at the end of the Second World War. It happened on the night of 14–15 August 1945, just before the announcement of Japan's surrender to the Allies. The coup was attempted by the Staff Office of the Ministry of War of Japan and many from the Imperial Guard to stop the move to surrender.

Kyūjō incident - Wikipedia


This demonstrates that surrender wasn't a popular option for the emperor.


They were going to lock the emperor in his room so that he couldn't surrender. Fortunately, the palace guard fought them off.


If the top brass knew Japan was going to surrender without a nuking, they would've let Japan surrender. Nukes were very expensive to make and they would've found another use for the nukes.
 
The Nation said:
Consider the small and little-noticed plaque hanging in the National Museum of the US Navy that accompanies the replica of “Little Boy,” the weapon used against the people of Hiroshima: In its one paragraph, it makes clear that Truman’s “political advisors” overruled the military in determining the way in which the end of the war in Japan would be approached.
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I don't see any quotation of the plaque.

Given Gar Alperovitz's history of fraud, it is safe to assume that the plaque says the opposite of what is claimed.


The Nation said:
Adm. William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.
Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said that “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”
Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan…”
Even the famous “hawk” Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, went public the month after the bombing, telling the press that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
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Not one of those comments were made before the A-bombs were dropped.

Hindsight is nice I guess. But hindsight should not be mislabeled as a view that was expressed during the war.


The Nation said:
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, for his part, stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “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…”
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And when Stimson told Ike that he was an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, Ike shut his mouth and didn't open it again until after his second term as president had ended and he had retired from political life.

As I noted in a previous post, even if Ike had somehow managed to be convincing, by the time he made his disastrous pitch to Stimson it was already too late to stop the A-bombs from being dropped.


The Nation said:
American intelligence had broken the Japanese codes, knew the Japanese government was trying to negotiate surrender through Moscow,
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It wasn't clear to American intelligence exactly what Japan was trying to achieve. It seemed most likely that they were trying to achieve an armistice and avoid surrender.


The Nation said:
and had long advised that the expected early August Russian declaration of war, along with assurances that Japan’s Emperor would be allowed to stay as a powerless figurehead, would bring surrender long before the first step in a November US invasion, three months later, could begin.
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Some people advocated for those measures. Others advocated against them. No one was foolish enough to say that something "would" bring about surrender. No one knew what it would take to achieve surrender.


The Nation said:
Historians still do not have a definitive answer to why the bomb was used.
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Yes they do. The A-bombs were used to weaken Japan's ability to resist our coming invasion.
 
Jredbaron96 said:
I'm sure you thought you were making some kind of point with that.
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The point was rather clear. Your inability to understand it notwithstanding.
 
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