This Day in History

[dragoon500ly]

August 6th, 1945

The atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima took place.

"And behold! I am created, the destroyer of Worlds!"

[raketenjagdpanzer]

"Now we're all sons-of-bitches."

[mikeo80]

I, for one, am ok with the dropping of the atomic bomb. My dad was training to be a carrier pilot for the invasion of Japan. They were told in training that 50% casualties in pilots was to be expected.

My $0.02

Mike

[Legbreaker]

August 6th, 1945

Of course that was yesterday - international date line and all that!

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I, for one, am ok with the dropping of the atomic bomb. My dad was training to be a carrier pilot for the invasion of Japan. They were told in training that 50% casualties in pilots was to be expected.

My $0.02

Mike

I, too, sleep well at night knowing the bombs were dropped.

[Graebarde]

I'll be the third to say I loose no sleep with the use of the bombs. My dad was in an armored field artillery in the Philipines at the time. He had a buddy that went on occupation in Japan, toured the beaches that they were scheduled to assault in third wave with their 'Priests'. It was attrocious the defenses they faced, and explained why they had at least three times basic load of cannister rounds. Lord only knows what the casulties would have been, but there's a high probability that I would never have been born.

[Adm.Lee]

The casualties for Olympic and Coronet would have been scary.

In some readings about 1995, I found some stuff that indicated that Magic/Ultra had let MacArthur down. Initially, it was thought there were 4 Japanese divisions on Kyushu, then they revised that to 9 divisions by August. American plans called for landing 3 corps, so that's about 9-10 divisions for the attacker. Not good odds, even with all the carriers we had, and air support from Okinawa. (This would have all been from the forces available in the Pacific, troops & planes from Europe would still be in transit.)

The scary bit for me was discovering the Japanese really had 14 divisions there, plus 3 tank brigades, and a really good idea where we were going to land. The difference was in troops pulled from Manchuria, so they were somewhat fresh and tested.

[Webstral]

I've been watching some of the more recent programs on the war in the Pacific. I'm struck by the increasing ferocity of combat as the fighting drew nearer to Japan. Honestly, I'm rather surprised that chemical weapons weren't used against the general population to soften them up before the initial landings. Too many of us look at the atomic bombings from our comfortable viewpoints and have no concept of the outlook of Americans who were facing fighting as brutal as anything on the Eastern Front.

[headquarters]

hindsight

I've been watching some of the more recent programs on the war in the Pacific. I'm struck by the increasing ferocity of combat as the fighting drew nearer to Japan. Honestly, I'm rather surprised that chemical weapons weren't used against the general population to soften them up before the initial landings. Too many of us look at the atomic bombings from our comfortable viewpoints and have no concept of the outlook of Americans who were facing fighting as brutal as anything on the Eastern Front.

MY musings on the subject - all in my humble opinion of course..

It is doubtless that Japan committed warcrimes on a large scale from 1933 - 1945. ( Their second world war period.) They eventually reaped the spoils of this and of course the populace bore the brunt.

Japan was subjected to a massive and near unprecedented atrocious aerial bombardment by the USAF. ( Conventional). Civillian centers were targeted as well as industrial and military targets. The USAF even commissioned 75 000 (!) V1 rockets or copies thereof to further slam the Japanese in the hope that they would give in. ( Dont know if any where used or how many actuallt were built).

The USN also blockaded Japan to the best of its ability leading to massive shortages, starvation and general need. Still the Japanese did not give in and indeed they conducted massive militarization programs to organise large parts of the populace into militias - some even armed with melee weapons.

The US / allied forces were faced with a large and professional force and a huge militia force that were well dug in and fighting in their homeland. Allied landing areas wrere limited. Japanese tenacity and so on were well known factors. Some allied analysts even believed that guerilla warfare would continue for years or even decades after a successful invasion and subsequent victory - if that was accomplished at all.

Casualties overall for the allies would have been staggering. So high, infact , that some believed ( like the Japanese high command as far as I know) that a truce or peace with some sort of acceptable terms would be possible for Japan.The allies had to take into account their public opinion back home as well as the military realities. This meant that they also had a timelimit to consider to see the victory through.

In this climate if you will , the decision to drop the atomic bombs was taken. The US gambled that Japan would surrender shortly after the event and that the loss of life would be relatively small compared to protracted and all out conventional warfare. This probably includes calculations on Japanese casualties.

So it is not easy to judge on the morality of the matter. The nukes probably killed a lot less people than the blockade and the conventional bombing campaigns against the civilian population did. Using WMD against populated areas is crossing a line nevertheless.

Everyone should make up their own minds I guess.

[Cdnwolf]

MY musings on the subject - all in my humble opinion of course..

So it is not easy to judge on the morality of the matter. The nukes probably killed a lot less people than the blockade and the conventional bombing campaigns against the civilian population did. Using WMD against populated areas is crossing a line nevertheless.

Everyone should make up their own minds I guess.

I agree only on this point that the cost in civilian lives was the lesser of two evils.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

One oft-overlooked fact was that the Japanese also had 3000 aircraft remaining - most outdated, or in poor condition - to sortie against the invasion fleet. This amounted to, by US estimates, two to three destroyed carriers of the line (destroyed as in, totally sunk) plus a lot of other smaller support ships. That's assuming CAP and perimeter defense ships worked entirely as planned.

The invasion also called for the softening up of enemy positions with atom bombs, so even more would've been used. And US troops would've marched straight into the fallout zones.

[Targan]

I'm morally torn on the nuking of Japan (twice). On one hand I'm against the targeting of civilian population centers with WMDs. On the other hand the Japanese treated Allied POWs about as bad as it's possible to treat anyone. So I can't help but feel that, as a society, the bastards had it coming. I still feel bad though, for the women and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who had little to no influence over what the Japanese military had done.

[WallShadow]

The use of nuclear weapons is a horrific thing; this should never be forgotten. I pray they are never, ever used to harm human beings again.

Saying that, and borrowing on Targan's comment on WMDs, need I point out the CBW branch of the Imperial Army, Special Unit 731 and its long run in China and Manchuria Or the specialized ceramic "bomb" developed to keep bacteriologic weapons viable until dropped Bubonic plague-infested rats set loose in China, such that the disease kept resurfacing for years thereafter Then there is the Uranium-235 shipped to Japan from Germany, with which the Japanese were to manufacture a dirty bomb: any doubt as to whether they would have hesitated for humanitarian reasons

Consideration for the civilian population was not a strong point in Japanese military culture, and hadn't been for over a decade--problems were evident in China in the '20s.

[headquarters]

Context

I agree with Targan and Wallshadow - in the context of the time using nuclear weapons probably seemed more acceptable.

Given the scope and brutality of WWII maybe we should be thankful the various sides didnt use more WMDs..

[Cdnwolf]

On August 9 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. It was an act that saw the end of World War II - and lead to the deaths of more than 150,000 people.