Quote from ARogueTrader:
The school that concludes killing civilians will end a war sooner than not.
Truman visited this school before he dropped the bomb on non military targets.
In late July 1945, General Douglas MacArthur (Commander in Chief of all Allied Forces in the Pacific/Asiatic Theater) had received news that Japan was seeking a meeting with the Russians to draft plans for formal a surrender. MacArthur decided to cease his plan to continue with operations to invade Japan (Operations Olympia and Coronet) which were slated for early to mid 1946. In his mind Japan was completely decimated and had lost the ability to conduct war. Days later MacArthur was upset that the US government decided to drop atomic bombs on Japanese civilian targets at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (After the bombs had fallen the general was said to been shaken and despondent.)
Many Japanese today can remember that Japan was "almost completely flat" with no buildings standing in the major cities during 1944-post WW2. The war was escalating in the numbers of atrocities or the neglect of sympathy to civilians as targets for war. Feb 13-14th 1944, Dresden, Germany was fire bombed by Allied aircraft for no apparent reason. It was a non military target known for its medieval architecture and ceramics. Dresden was a civilian target yet over 60,000 civilians were killed and many more homeless.
Tokyo had been fire bombed March 9-10, 1945 and some 83,000 civilians burned to death and thousands homeless. US B29 bomber crews commented on the stench of burning bodies when they made low level passes over Tokyo. "Brigadier General Bonner Feller described the air raids as the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history"
There are quite a few people today who argue that dropping the atomic bombs saved lives?
The actual invasion for Japan (if there was one going to be held) was nearly 6-9 months away. Wasn't there enough time to finalize a formal surrender with the Allies and Japan? By May 7th 1945, Germany had formally surrendered.......
The surrender for Japan was going to come about soon. Emperor Hirohito actually stopped all Kamikaze missions and wished to make peace with the Allies through the Russians (May 1945). The conclusion that dropping the atomic bombs was in order to save lives was made after the war was over and was not the initial reason why the atomic bombs were dropped. The atom bombs were dropped to intimidate the Russians and let them know who had the real power in the world at that time. It became the start of the Cold War.
Stalin had spies in Los Alamos and had already had news of the bomb and had plans to build their own.
So was dropping the atomic bombs really neccesary to end WW2? If you examine the atomic bombs casualties you may not think so: On August 6th 1945, "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan near the (Shima Hospital). In Hiroshima alone there were some 150,000 deaths in the first 2-3 months mostly seniors, women, and children. Months later the total would be over (300,000 dead).
This included more than 10,000 Koreans and some 3000 or more Chinese who resided in Hiroshima or were conscripted by the Japanese military for labor. It is estimated some 30,000 Koreans would die in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. This number included small numbers of Indonesian, Taiwanese, Thai, and other students studying in Japan or who were trapped there for the duration of the war. Also an estimated 250 Allied POW's perished in the atom bombings.
On August 9th, 1945," Fat Man" was dropped on Nagasaki killing over 140,000 people.
There is some strong speculation that the numbers of deaths were much higher since all of the major cities were destroyed in Japan. Many civilians congregated to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for relief and shelter. Some Japanese sources claim nearly 1,000,000 deaths that occurred from radiation poisoning and fallout in the following 25 years after the bombs were dropped.
The escalation of this type of warfare had led up to a nuclear holocaust that took the lives of unarmed civilians mostly women and children. There were so few weapons in Japan that teenage girls were learning to fight with bamboo spears in case an Allied invasion would come. The horrors of the atom bombs was almost too frightening to be written about. No film could capture its horror and depth of suffering. Radiation sickness, cancers, and blindness. Thousands of people would carry the disfiguring burns and radiation scars for a lifetime. Thousands would die in the next fifty years from strange maladies.
There were several hundred Japanese Americans who died in the bombings. They were mostly Kibei's (American citizens of Japanese ancestry who were studying in Japan before the war broke out) Some 1000 or so returned to America after the war as American Hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors). Many Japanese American families lost relatives and friends in both bombing raids while still residing in US concentration camps. Many Nisei veterans serving in Europe and the Pacific Theaters were saddened after hearing the news that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated.
