Yesterday (August 9) was the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the second and hopefully final time nuclear weapons have ever been used in anger.

The American use of nuclear weapons remains one of the great historical controversies of the 20th Century.
The orthodox position in the U.S., the traditional mixture of jingoism and selectively read evidence, is that the atomic bombings were necessary to bring the war to an end and saved tens of thousands of American (and Japanese, for that matter) lives. In 1945 my grandfather's tank battalion was in California practicing beach landings, and I don't think they were intending to invade Brazil. Because so many people in America can say that about their father or grandfather, this argument tends to be persuasive. Furthermore, there is little doubt that Operation Downfall would have produced horrendous casualties, a point which is usually enough to convince the casual historian of the Necessity of the atomic bombings.
Of course, if one has any but the most superficial understanding of the War it rapidly becomes apparent that this is a weak explanation. Conventional bombing, combined with the almost entirely successful Operation Starvation submarine blockade, could have accomplished the same thing. How many people realize that fewer people died at Nagasaki (80,000) or Hiroshima (~90,000) than in the largest conventional bombing raid on Tokyo (125,000)? By 1945 Japan had essentially no ability to defend itself from aerial attack. They could barely feed themselves let alone build and fuel planes, not to mention teach people to fly them effectively.
So the "bombing to save lives" argument doesn't necessarily lead to nuclear weapons.
This leads us to the most prominent explanation among the cynical – the Scare the Russians argument. There is probably some truth to the claim that the military and political classes in the U.S. wanted to obtain Japanese surrender before the Soviets, who were rapidly charging across Siberia to invade Japan from the north, could reach the islands and thus stake a claim to post-War Japan. This probably would have led to West/East Germany or North/South Korea situation in Japan. This is a decent argument but it is incomplete.
Speed was a major concern, but the Soviet Union was only part of the problem. To understand the real need to end the War quickly, one must come to grips with the fact that Tom Brokaw and his Greatest Generation franchise are absolutely full of shit. Shocking, I know. This will be quite a leap for many of you to make, but close your eyes and imagine a world in which The Greatest Generation was basically the same as any other. The U.S. needed to end the War quickly because the public was rapidly getting sick of it. Truman and Co. needed to end it because the political will to fight for another year or two simply wasn't there.
A few historians – most notably Kenneth Rose (Myth and the Greatest Generation), Joseph Ellis, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. – have tried but failed to pierce the powerful cloak of revisionist nostalgia that is draped over WWII in our collective memories, often suffering damage to their reputations in the process. But it the cultural myth of the America that was unanimously in support of Total War and making the attendant sacrifices simply wasn't there.
Brokaw states:
The men and women who stayed behind were fully immersed in the war effort. They worked long shifts, rationed gasoline, and ate less meat. They rolled surgical dressings for the Red Cross and collected cigarettes for the boys 'over there' (p. 87)
That just isn't true. Not even close. Yes, many Americans fit this description (and everyone alive thereafter tried to claim that they were of this mindset during the War) but many did not. There was a rampant black market on which people obtained the rationed goods they supposedly sacrificed. Absenteeism from war work was beyond rampant. Millions dodged the draft in one way or another.
Adultery, divorce rates, and juvenile delinquency (as the draft and women's entrance into the war workforce left millions of kids unsupervised) skyrocketed. The labor force ruthlessly exploited the dire need for military production to extract money for employers before abandoning those jobs for a new, better paying one. In short, even the small sacrifices that Americans were asked to make on the "Home Front" during the most important war of the last few centuries were too much for a lot of them to bear.
It stands to reason that many of the most "enthusiastic" or patriotic Americans signed up for service in one way or another, leaving war production work to those ineligible for service (women, the elderly, the very young, etc.) and the malingerers and opportunists. Those who were compelled by law or conscience to fight did so. Those who thought it might be more fun to stay safely at home making a killing in a labor-short market and banging the wives of servicemen who were overseas did so as well. That's the part that Brokaw and his followers prefer to forget while glorifying themselves – most of us are assholes, whether in 1945 or 2010. With WWII veterans dying at the staggering rate of about 1,000 per day it may not be long before we can take off the rose colored glasses and see the War to End All Wars in the cold light of reality. America resorted to a weapon of unprecedented danger in order to bring the War to a rapid conclusion, not only to save lives in an invasion and scare the Soviets but also in recognition of the political reality that the country was no longer willing to tolerate the most superficial sacrifices for much longer despite the vast economic incentives for doing so.
Benny says:
So basically, you're telling us that given the world as it was and people as they were, the decision to drop the bombs was pretty much a no-brainer. There was no *practical* alternative.
Pretty much what conventional (non-revisionist) historians have been claiming for 65 years.
But thanks for the confirmatiion.
J. Dryden says:
Welcome back!
I'll agree that War Fatigue–which is an inevitable part of every lengthy war, even those that don't involve direct enemy attacks on native soil–must have played a role. But surely the biggest consideration, at least for Truman and Marshall et al., had to be the lives of American soldiers. Granted that Operation Starvation would have worked, it would still involve putting Naval and Marine combatants in harm's way day after day, racking up a healthy body count. As for the feeble state of Japan at this point in the war, again, granted. But the article you direct us to informs us that Allied intelligence was pretty convinced that the Japanese populace would have preferred to go down swinging, and–perhaps unlike America–drew substantial pride from their unwillingness to yield to any kind of siege. (Hell, look at the example set by the Russians in the shockingly godawful siege of Leningrad. No way were the Japanese going to let those motherfuckers out-stoic them.)
All of which is to say, no, the bombing probably didn't save Japanese lives. But it *did* unquestionably save a bunch of American lives. In which case, Truman had a presidential duty to use any means available under the Geneva Convention (not that the Japanese gave a shit about that little document) to save those lives. We can easily get into the question of whether, by ushering in the atomic age, he ended up endangering more lives than he saved. (Though maybe not–if we hadn't have known just how horrible the bomb was, it would have been used at some point, and at a time and place much less favorable to us.)
Is the issue to use the bomb a simple one? No, and of course there's gonna be a lot of after-the-fact casuistry about how it was, unquestionably, The Right Thing To Do. But faced with a terrible decision, Truman opted for the one that, as the sworn defender of the people of the United States, he was bound to make. Was a there a lot of "Fuck you, Slant-Eyes, this is for Pearl Harbor?" in that decision? Most definitely. Was the unwillingness of the people of the U.S. to continue to deal with shortages of the good stuff also a factor? Sure. But could it have been accomplished without the additional loss of American lives? No. And given the precedent already set of bombing the living shit out of civilians–which *everyone* in the war, Allied and Axis, had shown they were basically OK with–well, why should the Bomb strike them as more horrible, simply because it was *one* bomb instead of many, and caused lingering deaths instead of immediate ones? (That second part, really, is the ugly part of it, isn't it? Well, that and the fact that, let's face it, it really is easier to kill people who look a whole lot different from you.)
Would any of us have chosen otherwise? And how would we justify that choice to the democratic populace who voted us into that position of choosing, we imagining ourselves in the shoes of those whose task it was to win the war while sustaining a minimum of American casualties?
Such abstract concepts as "ushering in a new terrible age of warfare" or "maintaining our decency and humanity in the face of a dreadful enemy" sound good in the abstract, but this shit wasn't happening in the abstract. It was here, and now, and came at being in sight of the end of the most frightening 'total war' ever fought. We might fault the decision, but I can't fault the men who made it. In short, maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but it sure as hell would have looked like the right thing to do to those who had experienced the war, and had to choose.
The Man, The Myth says:
Welcome back Ed.
Its a good post. I hear you on the WWII Greatest Generation, though my grandparents are better people than I will be.
The most important part of that post is the importance of cultural myths. Cultural myths change over time and differ in any place. Current myths in America tell us to consume goods and materials without mentioning any negative consequences of such actions. I would argue that this began just after WWII. Veterans got home and expected to be rewarded. They saw that America was the world's leading industrial power and they wanted big cars and big houses and boat loads of stuff. America didn't have enough housing so they convinced themselves to build out of the yucky dirty city and build suburban neighborhoods devoid of culture but for auto slums. The greatest generation started an incremental process that brought us to where we are now – the end of civilization.
daphne says:
not qualified to rebut or confirm the rest of your argument, but when it comes to women in the military I must advise you to change the word "ineligible" to "exempt." My mother volunteered to serve and did so; stationed in Paris as a WAC, she decoded "the war is over," never stopping to consider whether the declaration might be cynically premature. Though veterans (both my parents- my father being older, but not "too" old) are famously reluctant to boast of their heroism, my brother, sister, and I are quite proud of them, notwithstanding the case you make.
rumor says:
"But could it have been accomplished without the additional loss of American lives?"
It seem to me Ed already explained that the answer is yes. The russians would have done it.
Now, that was obviously not acceptable to the Americans, but that makes it a geopolitical decision, not a decision to save American soldiers. I am a little more skeptical than J. Dryden that the lives of soldiers already sent to die by the thousands ranked above all other concerns. To use his or her method of writing: Was avoiding the deaths of probably thousands more American soldiers a consideration? Yes, of course. Was it the highest consideration? Likely not. It does so happen, though, that the lives of American soldiers provide convenient cover for executing the most memorable act of geopolitical and military dominance that the world has literally ever seen.
Denzel Jonez says:
Glad you're back. Congratulations on the wedding by the way!
tommytimp says:
Welcome back.
I thought WWI was the War To End All Wars.
beau says:
Yes, yes, of course. All very practical. Damn near charitable, really. And as @rumor has it (I thank you), nothing at all to do with flopping the star spangled weiner out for everyone to fear and admire.
Shock and awe, motherfuckers!
Prudence says:
Welcome back, Ed!
I'm just hanging around waiting for bb to show up and shit his pants over this post.
Satur9 says:
I like what PZ Myers said:
"I am completely unswayed by the argument that the bombing saved American lives by convincing the Japanese that their cause was hopeless. If that were true, why not bomb a nearby deserted atoll as a demonstration? Why bomb two cities over the course of several days? Why not pick a military target rather than a civilian center? This was an act of callous terrorism."
Also: the second and hopefully final time nuclear weapons have ever been used in anger.
In anger? As opposed to…?
screeg says:
You seem to overlook the fact that back then the U.S. couldn't borrow Infinity Dollars to fight its wars. I think the impetus to finish it was probably motivated more by the rapidly dwindling funds for the War Department than by people angry about the cost of gas or cheese at home. Isn't it another famous American Myth that popular protest ended the Vietnam war, when economic reasons were probably the greater factor?
Elder Futhark says:
Pound for pound, nukes are the best investment the US government ever made. But only if you actively pursue an ROI, which we did. You left out getting our money's worth. The US was not only sick of war, it was flat broke. The timing could not have been more perfect.
Dictatorship gets shit done. Think the US would have put up with 10% of the population being killed off, like the Russkies? Not with that puss generation. They were even worse than their boomer spawn. And your generation, Ed, is a sickly, mewling, Eraserhead batch that should have been left to the wolves long ago. I blame indoor plumbing.
Which is to say, of course it was a show for Stalin. Anyone with a half brain recognizes that 1) there's no such thing as leakproof, meaning secrets don't stay secret very long, 2) the US will always be perceived as a soft, fat, pampered, spoiled, cowardly, weak-willed nation, because by default we are. But short-term display of an iron backbone (which any generation – surprise! – can develop, even yours Ed) works only for the short-term, which, in war and business, is good enough, and 3) we wanted to show Stalin that we could satisfy our most savage and base desires and fist fuck those little yellow monkey bangers right back into the shit-stained clay that they spontaneously generated out of. Hello Kitty my ass, they are the worst savages on the planet, except for us! Hint! Hint!
Do I feel sorry for the poor little Jap nuclear victims. Well, sure, but remember there's some blame to lay down at the feet of the incompetent fuckheads that ran Imperial Japan. Their Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Palins and Gingriches. How about those fucking cocksuckers?
Michael #2 says:
My college professor (Sidney Fine, born in 1920) served in Navy Intell. in the Pacific, and his argument for the necessity was very simple: that HAD we invaded Japan without using the Bombs, and even just 2500 Americans died, if it ever came out that we had the weapon and Truman chose to NOT use it, Truman would probably have been impeached for Treason. What's more frightening, the deeper one gets into the literature (particularly Richard Frank's _Downfall_), is that one could make an argument that there never was "*A*" decision to drop the bomb, but rather the decision-making process had become so mechanical that its use was never really critically questioned.
bb in GA says:
Pru:
No stains no pain.
My reading of history of the end of the Pacific phase of WW2 is closer to Ed et al than you might think possible.
I have always believed that we were closer to the end of our rope than we have "revised"
The Invasion of the Main Islands would have cost us about 1 million casualties with about 250K KIA. That would have been about a 60% increase over the 400K total killed in all theaters of the war.
Every mama-san and her grandbaby would have gone down swinging with axes and pitchforks. Our GIs would have to regularly face-to-face shoot, pop grenades on, bayonet, or napalm kids and old ladies.
We could have just conventionally bombed and starved 'em out. As tough as the Japanese were with their Bushido Code… Several years? I remember as a kid in the 1950s that Japanese troopers were found alive (and still at war!) on outlying Pacific islands.
The military costs of an invasion were pretty high given the state of mind in the US and the starve 'em out option would take too long.
The plus side for a quick end was what y'all said: "Don't mess w/ us (Uncle Joe) or we will incinerate you." and from Kahn in "The Wrath of.." that "Revenge is a dish best served cold.." about 4 years is pretty cold.
My pants are clean…
//bb
Bugboy says:
Hindsight is always 20/20…it's easy to look back now and say "Naaaa Japan was defenseless at that time" or some such rubbish. This was 1945,,,no satellite recon, no U2 photos, nothing. And no one mentions what China was doing either, how well did the US trust China to keep their mitts off of Japan? There is no love lost between those 2 countries.
All of the reasons mentioned are valid reasons to accelerate the pace of the war. It wasn't pretty but what war is? Just because saying it would save US lives is more palatable than saying we wanted to beat Russia to Japan doesn't mean it was any less valid of a reason. As you say, look what happened to Germany, I'll extend that to all the E.European countries that fell under the Iron Curtain.
BTW, I am a bit of a airplane buff…you wrote an essay a while back about the B-29 I can't find the link to, but I think you said the B-29 was used for the Tokyo firebombing…pretty sure it was either the B-17 or B-25 launched on one way tripsfrom carriers, which were ditched in the Sea of Japan or landed in China.
Ed says:
No, you're thinking of the Doolittle Raid in 1942. By the time of the Tokyo firebombing it was a parade of B-29s from Saipan.
Bugboy says:
Yeah that's the one…can you post that link again please, Ed. Thanks.
Monkey Business says:
Although I agree with the points Ed made in the article, there is an ancillary good that's come from America's use of the atomic bomb: the end of conventional army-to-army warfare. No nuclear power has fought a conventional war since WW2, because everyone is scared to death of some nutjob who decides things aren't going well and lets off a few nukes. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1, Afghanistan, Iraq 2, and so on and so forth. That particular paradigm shift in terms of military thinking has probably saved millions of lives from soldiers who would otherwise be needed in large scale conflicts.
displaced Capitalist says:
What about Slaughterhouse 5? What about Catch-22? Neither of those books painted the war in a good light.
But perhaps no Americans read anymore.
Lou Recine says:
You mentioned a number of authors who "have tried but failed to pierce the powerful cloak of revisionist nostalgia that is draped over WWII in our collective memories", but you didn't mention Gar Alperovitz, and his 1995 book, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". I'm about a quarter of the way through it at present.
Liebchen says:
I have always wondered why they didn't drop a bomb just outside of Tokyo Bay, say 25 miles out. That would have sent the very same statement as dropping one on H or N did, albeit with significantly less brutality.
Ed says:
Edward Teller, even though he was categorically insane, recommended exactly that. It was the last time he was to the left of anyone on this issue.
anotherbozo says:
I realize you were busy, Ed, but my intellectual life suffered during your honeymoon. Still, congrats.
This is interesting. I've suffered loss of self-esteem for years after finding myself the ogre in a conversation that took place during the dinner party of a half-Japanese, half-American couple. Everyone there held dropping the A-bomb an abomination and bestial act worthy of subhumans. I alone dared to quibble. That you share my doubt is belated reinforcement; maybe I wasn't the obtuse, morally-bankrupt ignoramus after all.
ts46064 says:
The autocracies done to Japan during WWII are nothing compared to what China received from Japan during the 8 year Second Sino-Japanese War.
Estimates are as high as 17,000,000 civilian deaths, plenty of guilt to go around.
truth=freedom says:
@Bugboy: China as a country simply didn't exist. Large portions were still ostensibly controlled by the Japanese, and those that weren't were under control of various warlord types (which is why there was a Communist revolution underway soon after the end of the war).
I don't know that dropping the bombs was the wrong thing to do, all things considered. It was a bad thing to do, though. We should acknowledge that innumerable people suffered in the belief that it was preventing innumerable people suffering after innumerably many people suffered for a really long time already.
Causing suffering to avert suffering is a fool's errand. We really will never know if the war could have been ended quickly without killing so many people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (many of whom were undoubtedly non-combatants). But to continue to deny that there were possibly other paths to take (which may have been worse for the US, or may have worked out better) is wrong. Denying the humanity of the people who died as a result is wrong. And basing that continued denial on the fact that the Japanese continue to deny the humanity of so many of their victims from that era is also wrong.
There was just wrong all around.
Fifth Dentist says:
"The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945.
If the surrender by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the Emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia
Fifth Dentist says:
Sorry, my quote appears to have been cut off for some reason.
"Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945 and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia."
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html
Robert says:
There's an AH novella, "Two Dooms" treating the theme of 'how would WWII have turned out without the Bomb?". It's . . . rather grim. In short, Downfall becomes D-Day every day for a month, and the occupation forces are pulled out of Germany to supplement the Pacific forces. The Soviet Army begins heading East. With the Allies sending what's left of their armies into the Japanese meatgrinder, the Germans look around and decide to take advantage. . . . .
I know, counterfactual speculation. For that matter, if the Japanese had waited four or five more years to bomb Pearl Harbor, they could very well have established enough of a presence in the Eastern Pacific that we would not have been able to defeat them – unless FDR had managed to get the isolationists in Congress to declare war for some other reason.
bb in GA says:
For another possible justification that has nothing to do with American troops or Japanese civilians comes through Barry Farber.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=189733
"Here now, is the moral justification for the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Hitler's Germany was in its last days, the Nazi empire that once stretched from above the Arctic Circle to Egypt and from the English Channel to the gates of Moscow had shrunk to six city blocks in downtown Berlin.
By contrast; at the end, the Japanese held over 95 percent of everything they'd conquered; a huge hunk of China, all of Manchuria and Korea, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong; they'd only lost a few islands to American invasion. Across that vast empire there were hundreds of Japanese prison camps with millions of prisoners enduring treatment that rivaled the Holocaust.
Van Der Post estimated that, if the war had lasted only another six weeks, more lives would have been lost in those prison camps through starvation, disease and cruelty than were lost to the atomic bombing. Despite Japan's dire situation, if their "suicide" mindset had remained intact, it would have taken much longer than six weeks to end it."
//bb
Prudence says:
bb, the World Nut Daily isn't a source I'd recommend anyone take seriously. But, to answer your point, no. The Japanese, as odious as they were during WWII, could not have killed 125,000 + 80,000 + 90,000 in 6 weeks. Also, "millions of prisoners"? What? Nor would they have been able to hold their territories as, from a manpower perspective alone, they were outnumbered, even though they had rounded up and shot or imprisoned many of the fighting age men when they captured each new place. Occupation, as we have seen with the Iraq shenanigans, isn't as straightforward as conquest, especially when you're not getting resupplied.
bb in GA says:
Prudence:
from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes
'Historian Mitsuyoshi Himeta reports that a "Three Alls Policy" (Sankō Sakusen) was implemented in China from 1942 to 1945 and was in itself responsible for the deaths of "more than 2.7 million" Chinese civilians.
This scorched earth strategy, sanctioned by Hirohito himself, directed Japanese forces to "Kill All, Burn All, and Loot All."'
Let's linearize the data: 1942 – 45 – call that about 4 years or 200 weeks
That works out to 13.500 people dying per week. Six weeks = 81,000 dead.
I think we can extrapolate this activity all over the Imperial Japanese Empire in all the areas (including the camps) we can probably exceed your number.
//bb
Paul W. Luscher says:
One thing: the invasion of Japan was estimated as potentially resulting in a million casualties to the invading Allied forces. But what also needs to be taken into account is that while Japan was apparently helpless, it was also preparing to fight to the last Japanese. Literally. Among other things, civilians were issued sharpened sticks with which they were supposed to meet the invading forces on the beach.
In other words, the plan was to commit national suicide. One could argue that in addition to saving Allied lives, the use of the A-bomb saved an entire nation from going to its death, in a horrible manner-either slaughter or starvation.
Also, it's easy for us to condemn the use of the A-bomb 65 years later. We have had time for cool reflection. But we have to consider what the American people and government knew and thought in 1945. To them, the Japanese seemed like an implacably savage people–kamikazes and all that (Suggest you read "With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa" by E.B. Sledge to get an idea of how savage the fighting in the Pacific was). And it seemed then that no amount of reason would convince the Japanese to end the war. (Let's not forget that even AFTER the A-bombs were dropped, there was an attempted coup by the Japanese military to prevent the Emperor from issuing his surrender declaration.)
So while, i do not think the use of the atomic bombs is anything to be proud of, I wish those who loudly damn America for using it would take the above into consideration. Things might have been much, much uglier if we HADN'T used the A-bomb.
Oh yeah…there was one other benefit to using the A-bomb in 1945: It's kept us from using the damn thing on on each other ever since….
Tosh says:
With the passage of time, an analytical eye to broach this subject come more into a sharp focus. All of Japan major cities were built of wood and some parts were very old as well. a small tidbit rarely mentioned: The island and its population porvided a near perfect fulfilment of criteria outlined for a large scale radiation experiment. Eve wonder why the US still maintains several large medical facilities in Japan… Food for though.
The United States strategic bombing of Japan took place between 1942 and 1945. In the last seven months of the campaign, a change to firebombing tactics resulted in great destruction of 67 Japanese cities, as many as 500,000 Japanese deaths and some 5 million more made homeless. Emperor Hirohito's viewing of the destroyed areas of Tokyo in March 1945, is said to have been the beginning of his personal involvement in the peace process, culminating in Japan's surrender five months later
In early 1945 the allied forces changed their tactics to expand the coverage and increase the damage. 335 B-29s took off on the night of 9
Tosh says:
on the night of 9–10 March, with 279 of them dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more than the immediate deaths of either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic bombs. The US Strategic Bombing Survey later estimated that nearly 88,000 people died in this one raid, 41,000 were injured, and over a million residents lost their homes. The Tokyo Fire Department estimated a higher toll: 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department established a figure of 124,711 casualties including both killed and wounded and 286,358 buildings and homes destroyed. Richard Rhodes, historian, put deaths at over 100,000, injuries at a million and homeless residents at a million. These casualty and damage figures could be low; Mark Selden wrote in Japan Focus:
in light of population density, wind conditions, and survivors' accounts. With an average of 103,000 inhabitants per square mile and peak levels as high as 135,000 per square mile, the highest density of any industrial city in the world, and with firefighting measures ludicrously inadequate to the task, 15.8 square miles (41 km2) of Tokyo were destroyed on a night when fierce winds whipped the flames and walls of fire blocked tens of thousands fleeing for their lives. An estimated 1.5 million people lived in the burned out areas.
Yeah… we needed to drop another bomb, or two…
Tosh says:
so, in my humble opinion, the only use of a nuclear weapon during a time of war, by any nation, was a political act, and completelt unnecessary. The japanese were ready to surrender, but we had to make a point.
Tosh says:
McNamara's comment on the bombing was this: LeMay said that "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.
An illustrative chart and tome:
http://www.ditext.com/japan/napalm.html
bb in GA says:
Would it be too audacious to believe that absent any firebombing or nuking of anybody during WW2 had the USA lost the war that her political and military leaders would have been skinned and hung by their private parts for merely resisting the Imperial Japanese Empire and the Third Reich?
//bb
Tosh says:
@BB: Not sure if that is an argument… seems more akin to a fear based projection/supposition, derivative rationalization (i.e. all losing parties are war criminals.) The most recent example being Saddam, who was offically assassinated/murdered simply because (not making a value judgement.) Seems mighty white…
Hindsight being 20/20, current thinking is the Japanese were ready and willing to negotiate a surrender and a helpless, defeated people/nation
evrenseven says:
I can't believe it's taken me this long to find this blog, which is quickly my favorite. I was kicked out of high school, mostly because I didn't conform. I never got a high school equivalency, but through hard work and junior college I'm now a patent attorney.
The reason I'm telling you this is that I had one- exactly one teacher in high school who let me (and all his students) research and explore and come up with their own conclusions. He taught 20th century US history or something, my sophomore year.
I wrote a research paper on the end of WWII, and the use of the bomb, and it was basically exactly the points of this post. Reading it almost brought a tear to my eye.
Tosh says:
@Evrenson: Not uncommon set of circumstances.
I too was just not interested in compulsory education.
Several degress and grad school later….
(hard work and community college)