Enola Gay, heroism or insanity?

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Shinpachi said:
I understand you kill people to save the rest of the people.
A nice logic for the war and I may use it too in the future.

What if they don't surrender?
When will you stop or not stop.

I am curious.
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Shinpatchi, that is why I said it could be a political problem, bombing and starving a defenseless civilian population. Similar in a way to what the British faced in India with Ghandi.
 
pbehn said:
Shinpatchi, that is why I said it could be a political problem, bombing and starving a defenseless civilian population. Similar in a way to what the British faced in India with Ghandi.
Click to expand...

I hope it a unique logic for Americans only.
A few years ago, a Japanese girl living in the U.S. claimed the same logic in Facebook.
She had been isolated after all.
 
Shinpachi said:
I understand you kill people to save the rest of the people.
A nice logic for the war and I may use it too in the future.

What if they don't surrender?
When will you stop or not stop.

I am curious.
Click to expand...

Shinpatchi san;
That is a most difficult question to answer. An easy answer would be to say when the "threat" is neutralized, but the enemy may know no other recourse except to fight to the death. I would like to believe that somewhere combatants would meet at a middle ground and say enough, but why settle for that when we could hope and pray that war on any scale can be avoided?
 
Shinpachi said:
I hope it a unique logic for Americans only.
A few years ago, a Japanese girl living in the U.S. claimed the same logic in Facebook.
She had been isolated after all.
Click to expand...
That is the way it worked out Shinpatchi, the loss of life was certainly less than fighting over every island in Japan, also certainly less than a continued campaign of conventional bombing. I dont know how long American public opinion could accept bombing an enemy that was incapable of fighting back and being in control of a military regime couldnt surrender either, it is not normal in the American psyche (as I understand it).
 
This is the essence of what military historians usually term 'modern' warfare as opposed to 'primitive' warfare. Modern warfare in the west dates back at least to the ancient Greeks. You fight until such casualties on one side or the other that one of the two decides enough is enough and concedes. How much is enough varies across time and cultures, 20% casualties will convince most western militaries to hoist a white flag. The two terms are used in a specific way in this context. In any case Japan and the US were both most definitely 'modern' in this sense.

When different military systems clash the result can be catastrophic. See Alexander the Great as an example.

To answer the question, the victor stops when the vanquished concedes defeat, exactly as happened between the US and her allies and Japan. If the Japanese had elected to continue to fight then the US would continue to inflict casualties until Japan conceded.
There was a lot of rhetoric from both vanquished nations (Japan and Germany in this context) about fighting to the last man. Neither did so.

Cheers

Steve
 
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However, as the Allies got closer to the Home Islands, the intensity of the fighting increased by a great degree.

Iwo Jima was a brutal battle that consumed over 3/4 of the Japanese forces, Okinawa was a savage battle that consumed nearly all the Japanese forces.

These two battles in particular, were seen as a herald of things to come, when the Allies tried to take the beaches of the Home Islands.
 
GrauGeist said:
These two battles in particular, were seen as a herald of things to come, when the Allies tried to take the beaches of the Home Islands.
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Leahy and King would agree with you. Marshall and MacArthur would not. MacArthur pointed out the problems associated with surrounding Japan and starving and bombarding her into submission, including the wide dispersal of US resources and the risk of obtaining bases on the Chinese coast which might lead to long and drawn out operations on the Asiatic mainland. Anyway, as of 18th June 1945 the invasion(s) became Plan A and the blockade Plan B.

Agreed on June 18th:

1. Air bombardment and blockade of Japan from bases in Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Marianas, and the Philippines.

2. Assault of Kyushu on 1 November 1945, and intensification of blockade and air bombardment.

3. Invasion of the industrial heart of Japan through the Tokyo Plain in central Honshu, tentative target date 1 March 1946

The use of nuclear weapons superseded both and in my opinion saved lives on both sides.

Cheers

Steve
 
You had better not say "save lives of both sides" but "our side" only like someone wrote somewhere in this forum as it sounded honest.

About my What-if, I now understand that you would proudly say "We fortunately saved 1% of the enemy population" even if killed the rest of all.
Even Emperor Hirohito declared "I accept the Potsdam Declaration for the world peace" proudly on the defeated day.
I know this is also a unique logic for our own people only. History may need decoration.

Thanks for your precious opinions.
 
Shinpachi-san...it is always difficult to come to a conclusion in the case of ending the war with Japan.

There are so many different ways that it could have ended but sadly, in the end, it will always point to suffering of the citizens. There's just no way to accurately predict how many would have perished or experienced hardships, but it can be certain that no matter which option was chosen to end the war, the people would have been caught in the middle.

It's a sad fact that throughout history, the citizens have always had to bear the burden of the leader's whims.
 

Having lived in Japan for a while, if the Japanese conducted their defence as they did on Iwo Jima and Okinawa then an invasion in my opinion would take 5 years at least probably more, when women would jump into the sea with their children rather than surrender the definition of war in western terms is changed .
 
I haven't fully read all of this, but I will say my piece and then leave it at that. Japan decided to embark on a war of aggression. War is terrible, and there is always a risk when you place your fate at the altar of the god of war.

The war did not go the way the Japanese had hoped. The forces ranged against her were too strong. They spelt out their terms which were unconditional surrender. The allies at that time stated that they now possessed a weapon of immense power and they would use it. The Japanese had concerns regarding retention of their territorial integrity and respect for their emperor. They procrastinated in effect. They no longer possessed any ability to participate in the debate as they had lost the battle. Despite having the knowledge and experience of Allied unstoppable power, something neither glamorous or sophisticated, they chose to mess about and play games. Truman decided to unleash the full power of the wepons at his disposal. I might add also that the the Russians also unleashed all the wepons at their disposal, a somewhat less technologically impressive weapon, but a wepon of great power nevertheless. Japan, because of its continuing intransigence, got itself even more crushed and defeated because of actions and decisions it had made to the Potsdam declarations.

On July 26, the United States, Britain, and China released the Potsdam Declaration announcing the terms for Japan's surrender, with the warning, "We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay."

The official response of the Japanese was that of "mokusatsu", which can be interpreted in a very negative way, "to kill with silence", or can mean only "to practise wise inactivity". This was interpreted by the Allies in the first sense, which they had the right to do, since the whole point of Potsdam was that the Japanese administration no longer had any rights whatsoever.

So, in my view, the Japanese received swift, terrible but well advised retribution. they have only themselves to blame for the destruction that followed.
 

Exactly. I keep hearing and reading how 'the bombs were dropped after the Japanese had already lost the war' which is utter nonsense. Japan had not lost the war until she acknowledged defeat and accepted the terms, however harsh, of her surrender. As soon as she did so all offensive action against her stopped. Any Japanese casualties, however caused, incurred between the point when her leaders knew the war was a lost cause and her actual surrender are entirely the responsibility of that Japanese leadership. To somehow attempt to taint the hands of the US and her allies with their blood is another dangerous revision of history.

All casualties on all sides in all wars are a human tragedy. No normal person, looking back on history, would wish a Japanese person dead any more than they would an American or anyone else. However, responsibility for the Japanese killed and injured in the last months of WW2, including the victims of the atomic bombs, lies squarely with the Japanese leadership.

Steve
 
Remember IJA held thousands of the chemical shells.
I wonder if you, or we, as postwar generation could claim humanism for enemy citizens even if they were used against the Allies.

You dropped A-bombs to save your own soldiers' lives and that was a fair decision.
Hirohito also saved Japanese lives because of his sane decision.
But I will not say that he also saved the Allied soldiers' lives as it was not our business.
 
I believe you are correct in that the Allies dropped the bombs to save allied lives and not Japanese lives. The saving of Japanese lives would have been a secondary consideration and probably well down on the list.

However the revisionist history comes in with the notion that somehow, if the war had dragged on, even for a few months, that the Japanese loss of life would somehow have been much lower than the losses caused by the bombs. If instead Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been fire bombed by hundreds of bombers and not once but twice and other Japanese cities had also been hit, either new smaller cities or repeat visits/raids to already badly damaged cities. With many ports already block by the mine campaign many Japanese were already starving. Millions were already homeless.

They (the revisionists) count the losses caused by the bombs but not the 'probable' losses caused by other weapons/effects of the war being prolonged by even a few months. Say the Japanese leadership had delayed until October of 1945 to surrender, still no invasion but how many thousands of Japanese would have died in the mean time?
 
All logical, im tempted to agree, especially when family are implicated, but truth is, no one knows if the fighting would have lasted weeks, months, years? Only the japanese high command have those answers. Speculation doesnt provide accurate figures. Its tempting to think that the japanese commanders were determined to fight with no surrender, but thats not a certainty. I have japanese family, who were taught that there were plans for surrender being drafted before the atomic bombing.
No way of knowing how accurate this is, there are lots of unknowns and uncertainties, especially when war time plans from so long ago are what opinions are based on.
 
Shinpachi said:
Remember IJA held thousands of the chemical shells.
I wonder if you, or we, as postwar generation could claim humanism for enemy citizens even if they were used against the Allies.
Click to expand...

The British certainly entertained the idea of using chemical weapons against a German invasion of the British Isles. Heaven only knows what response that might have provoked from the Germans. In WW2, as in many wars, there was a descending spiral into more and more brutal expediencies as the war went on. The moral high ground simply sank into a quicksand of necessity. The British went from being squeamish about bombing Germany in case private property was inadvertently destroyed to flattening a vast acreage of Germany's cities and explicitly targeting German civilians, their housing and city infrastructures.

If Japan had used her chemical arsenal there would have been both outrage from the allies and very possibly retaliation in kind. The US and her allies also held substantial stocks of various chemical weapons. History also tends to be written by the victors, which would not have reflected well on Japan.

The atomic bombs were not dropped with any intention of saving Japanese lives, they were dropped to save American lives. However it is entirely possible that despite the awful loss of life at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, overall, Japanese lives were saved. I don't like these number games, these are human beings we are talking about, not numbers, but ultimately that's what war is about. You make sure that the enemy's losses are higher and less sustainable than your own by any means possible. The object is not to give your enemy a fair chance, but to do everything in your power to deny him that chance.

Steve
 
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The fact that some members in the Japanese high command actually attempted to overthrow their emperor after the surrender order was issued I think is more than enough evidence to show that there was plenty of fight left in the Japanese military and surrender wasn't going to be an option. The invasion fleet was on its way, there was no indication to show that the Japanese were going to surrender prior to August 6, 1945. If one studies and UNDERSTANDS all the facts one doesn't need quantitative figures to show that if the bomb wasn't dropped there was going to be an invasion. This isn't speculation, it's cold hard facts!!!
 
And don't imagine that the allies would necessarily have been over squeamish about the use of chemical weapons. The British had a track record with such weapons and Churchill was a long term proponent of chemical weapons. Perhaps it is worth remembering the infamous 'poison gas memo' sent by Churchill to Ismay on 6th June 1944

PRIME MINISTER'S PERSONAL MINUTE

Serial No. D. 217/4

10 Downing Street, Whitehall

GENERAL ISMAY FOR C.O.S. COMMITTEE

1. I want you to think very seriously over this question of poison gas. I would not use it unless it could be shown either that (a) it was life or death for us, or (b) that it would shorten the war by a year.

2. It is absurd to consider morality on this topic when everybody used it in the last war without a word of complaint from the moralists or the Church. On the other hand, in the last war bombing of open cities was regarded as forbidden. Now everybody does it as a matter of course. It is simply a question of fashion changing as she does between long and short skirts for women.

3. I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas, by which I mean principally mustard. We will want to gain more ground in Normandy so as not to be cooped up in a small area. We could probably deliver 20 tons to their 1 and for the sake of the 1 they would bring their bomber aircraft into the area against our superiority, thus paying a heavy toll.

4. Why have the Germans not used it? Not certainly out of moral scruples or affection for us. They have not used it because it does not pay them. The greatest temptation ever offered to them was the beaches of Normandy. This they could have drenched with gas greatly to the hindrance of the troops. That they thought about it is certain and that they prepared against our use of gas is also certain. But they only reason they have not used it against us is that they fear the retaliation. What is to their detriment is to our advantage.

5. Although one sees how unpleasant it is to receive poison gas attacks, from which nearly everyone recovers, it is useless to protest that an equal amount of H. E. will not inflict greater casualties and sufferings on troops and civilians. One really must not be bound within silly conventions of the mind whether they be those that ruled in the last war or those in reverse which rule in this.

6. If the bombardment of London became a serious nuisance and great rockets with far-reaching and devastating effect fell on many centres of Government and labour, I should be prepared to do anything that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. I may certainly have to ask you to support me in using poison gas. We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. We could stop all work at the flying bomb starting points. I do not see why we should have the disadvantages of being the gentleman while they have all the advantages of being the cad. There are times when this may be so but not now.

7. I quite agree that it may be several weeks or even months before I shall ask you to drench Germany with poison gas, and if we do it, let us do it one hundred per cent. In the meanwhile, I want the matter studied in cold blood by sensible people and not by that particular set of psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which one runs across now here now there. Pray address yourself to this. It is a big thing and can only be discarded for a big reason. I shall of course have to square Uncle Joe and the President; but you need not bring this into your calculations at the present time. Just try to find out what it is like on its merits.

Winston Churchill
 
Ive made my position pretty clear on this issue, but there is one aspect to the dropping of the bomb that does need to be acknowledged. already, by the latter part of 1945, the alliance with the Soviets was falling apart, and the Truman administration were keen to minimise Soviet advances into the pacific. it was already becoming clear that wherever the Red Army got to, they would stay there. The last thing the Allies wanted was a strong Soviet military presence in the japanese Home Islands. Already (or it may have been just after the bombs were dropped) the Soviets had conducted a series of amphibious assaults into the Kuriles and wrested Sakhalin from japanese control. The Soviet steamroller was about to unleash itself into Manchukuo. If the war had dragged on, it was very possible that Soviet troops would be the ones overrrunning tokyo. This was the nightmare scenario for truman, and they were determined to stop it if they could. That meant ending Japanese resistance quickly . OLYMPIC was unlikely to deliver that, the atomic road was far more likely to contain the Russians. There was also the aspect of shock and awe.....truman wanted to show uncle Joe that he had the bomb and he wasnt afraid to use it. What truman did not know is that stalin already knew about the about the bomb and cared little for its power.
 
A difficult situation for the Americans. They had spent three years attempting to get the Soviets involved in the war against Japan. Both political and military authorities seem to have been convinced from the start that Soviet assistance, conceived in various ways, would shorten the war and lessen the cost. In October 1943 Marshal Stalin had told Cordell Hull, then in Moscow for a conference, that the Soviet Union would eventually declare war on Japan. At the Tehran Conference in November of that year, Stalin had given the Allies formal notice of this intention and reaffirmed it in October 1944. In February 1945, at the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed on the terms of Soviet participation in the Far Eastern war. Thus by June 1945, the Americans could look forward to Soviet intervention at a date estimated as three months after the defeat of Germany. Unfortunately by this time the Americans had undergone something of a change of heart regarding the desirability of Soviet involvement. The official War Department line was still 'Russian entry will have a profound military effect in that almost certainly it will materially shorten the war and thus save American lives...'. But at the 18th June meeting King had said 'regardless of the desirability of the Russians entering the war, they were not indispensable' he also said that he was confident that "we [the US] could handle it alone." . Harriman's view, prevalent in the administration, was "Russia would come into the war regardless of what we might do." A further complication was that allied intelligence reports indicated that Soviet intervention would be desirable, if not indispensable, for a successful invasion.
All of these factors mitigated in favour of the use of the bomb(s) and to imagine that the looming possibility of the once hoped for, now unwelcome, Soviet intervention didn't have an influence on the final decision would be naïve.
Cheers
Steve
 
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