The fact remains that the nuclear attacks were the deliberate mass killing of non-combatants. I'd rather not divert the thread into a discussion of the reality of the dilemma you suppose, but do you think Nagasaki remains good law? If an enemy on whom the US had declared war, for example, Islamists, felt the most expedient way to bring their conflict with the US to an end was to detonate nuclear weapons in two US cities, would you accept that this was legally justified by the H/N precedent? Why not?

Incendiary bombing of Dresden, Germany and Tokyo, Japan killed more non-combatants than either atomic bomb; and incindiary bombing destroyed more structures in Dresden and Tokyo, than were destroyed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs.
Why didn't you include incindiary bombs in your concerns about collateral damage?


Yes.

No.
We didn't nuke Mecca. We did not pre-empt any attack against Islam prior to 9/11, nor prior to any Hezbollah, Al-Quedah nor any other whacko declaration of jihad against the US of A.

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki Industrial manufacturing areas? Military bases near?

Or were they innocent cities that were not involved with the war with manufacturing or installations?

Yes, yes and no.

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

That's how I learned it in history too.

I may be wrong...
But I was also taught that we Warned prior to dropping BOTH bombs as well as allowing for evacuation of civilians - IF they chose to evacuate before the bomb was dropped.
Many either did not believe or whatever- and did not evacuate.

They weren't mentioned in the post to which I replied.

Would you be happier with Iraq as an example?

Do you have a reference for that? I think you may be a victim of victor's history.

Nope.
Do you have a reference stating otherwise?

I've given this some thought, amongst our other topics.

I'm going to presume (upon knowledge of tolitarian governments), that the Japanese public had been ordered to leave paper from allied aircraft, alone.

If and only if that were true, then only a small percentage of the Japanese citizenry had knowledge of the warnings; and they were fringe people, ignored by faithful Japanese citizen. Hai.

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Salty
"...with God, all things are possible..." Even evolution

Just to put this to rest:

You are wrong. No warning was given to Japan before either nuclear bombing.

There was some discussion (prior to the attacks) about the possibility of dropping a bomb on an uninhabited area with advance notice, as a demonstration ("surrender or we use these on you"). This idea was quickly dropped for several reasons. First, if the bomb should "fizzle" (fail to go off), it would give the Japanese a source of enriched nuclear material, with which they might build a bomb of their own. Second, Japan might have put up a heavy defensive screen around the demonstration site, thereby shooting down the plane leading to capture of the bomb or its remnants (see point 1). Third, the US had only two bombs to hand, with the next batch to be ready no sooner than a month later, so dropping a demonstration bomb was considered too costly. And fourth, the American government had little sympathy for Japan after Pearl Harbor and the brutality shown by the Japanese army during the war.

My reference is The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (hard copy). Highly recommended.

And now I back slowly away from the politics, making a cross wth my forefingers.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I should know this better than I do. But I think that's correct. Apparently, leaflets were dropped over Nagasaki on the 10th (the day after the bombing). However, there were apparently leaflets dropped over various Japanese cities starting in March, that were basically propaganda leaflets saying "your cities will get destroyed if you don't surrender". So the thing is, even if leaflets were dropped (and it's true that the authorities forbid people from reading them), people would naturally see it as propaganda. Lots of cities were bombed, in various countries, during WWII, and people didn't necessarily evacuate.

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As above, so below

A false dichotomy and an irrelevancy. They were not compelled either to announce a demonstration in advance nor to inform the Japanese of its location. A bomber going off 10 miles from any Japanese city would be quite an effective demonstration. Whether the bombing was a demonstration or not the bomb might fizzle. A dud that fell in the city would be much more likely to be found quickly than one that fell in the countryside, so dropping the bomb over a city increased that risk.

A month wasn't long to wait and there is no reason to think that destroying two cities was essential. The Japanese were beaten and incapable of offensive action. They would likely have accepted terms short of unconditional surrender.

So they wanted to kill Japanese civilians in large numbers. The rest is rationalization. Note the great haste with which the second bombing took place, only three days after the first, as if they were racing to get it in before the "Japs" surrendered. Three days is a little too short to expect the enemy to adapt to a complete revolution in strategic warfare.

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I have a book called Shockwave:Countdown To Hiroshima

scary stuff...

I have japanese friends and they are nice people (like myself!).

PL

The amount of damage was not exceptional (fire bombing had done worse), only the method of delivery was. The point was to impress upon them how quickly we could now destroy them, if they continued to fight.

The Japanese government was extremely resistant to surrender and quite happy to let their people die in large numbers. After Pearl Harbor, nothing short of unconditional surrender was acceptable. There was no way we were going to let the existing government continue, possibly with the USSR involved in the mess.



As the event gets further back in time, I notice more and more people that can't relate to what actually was happening at the time.

My mother remembers hearing the announcement that much of our fleet had been destroyed at Pearl Harbor and that we were suddenly at war. It was massive shock - by comparison, 9/11 was a pale imitation. She was still in high school, and soon, kids she knew were going away to fight, and many were dying. Then her own brother went off to the Pacific, and her boyfriend (later my father) went to Europe. A huge portion of our civilian population was now fighting, and there was the very real fear that our country was going to come to an end. Note that most of the U.S. "armed forces" were drafted civilians.

If Japan hadn't surrendered, my uncle, her brother, would almost certainly have been in the Japanese mainland invasion - a recent "civilian" who would have been fighting Japanese "civilians."

No, there was no great sympathy for the Japanese, who were not seen as "civilians," but future combatants. There was a very strong interest in keeping more Americans from being killed. It's horrible that people had to die, but it could have been far worse.

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I'm not a historian and not an expert at all here, but I am under the impression that an unstated issue here was the USSR. I think Japan was hoping that the USSR would act as a mediator, and that was partly why they rejected Potsdam. And when the USSR declared war on Japan (on August 9, the same day as Nagasaki), Japan basically found itself without any real choice. And I think it may be that the motivation to drop the bombs promptly was partly to get the Japanese to surrender before a Soviet declaration of war, to prevent the USSR from taking parts of the Japanese Empire. I've also heard (though I don't know how true this is) that one of the motivations behind the atomic bombings was to demonstrate to the USSR that the US had such weapons.

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As above, so below

I'm starting to find this out.. But won't comment any further... Not because of politics or anything but just because:
I've looked up a bunch of references and got all absorbed in reading.
I don't wanna spew out any more of my ignorance.

It seems, not only was I wrong about warning- But the mission to drop the bomb was carried out in heavy secrecy as well.

Logical, actually. If the attacked were expecting that attack- they would do everything they could to prevent such an attack.

But man- I've uncovered enough reading on this to keep me busy for months!

But the mission to drop the bomb was carried out in heavy secrecy as well.

Amazing secrecy. The ship that delivered the bomb parts to Tinian was under strict radio silence, even on her homeward leg. As a result, when she was sunk by a Japanese submarine, no one knew about it for several days.

She was, of course, the USS Indianapolis.

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Very emotive subject but once the tanks rolled in Europe (earlier in China, lets not forget),at that time in history like it or not, civilians became targets. The aggressors saw to that. Whether it was moral or manufacturing capability they became the unfortunate pawns in the battle on both sides.

A few thoughts.
The far east campaign had some very terrible episodes and certainly the way the Japanese military acted did them no favors. To both civilians and captured allied soldiers. You also have the military in a very fragment command and control across the far east and a Japan with no resources to speak of. Then you have to take into account actions like Iwo Jima. The society and the ability to send out suicide raids on a whim and fight to the last man despite overwhelming odds. Coupled with the military still thinking they could surrender and keep all gains you have one heck of a softening up to do before landing. The surrender had to be to the Potsdam agreement. On the back of all that the Stalin is going to invade Manchuria and make a massive grab in the area.

I think that at that time in history, many commanders would have taken that option. The alternative was far worse for many reasons.

Of course it is fine to sit back and be armchair generals.

The big advantage of the atomic bombs over conventional weapons as
they were used on Japan was how impressive they were: One explosion
to pretty much wipe out an entire city. If the drops were announced
beforehand but failed to work, their value would have been completely
negated. Not being announced beforehand meant that they had to be
dropped on real targets, or they would appear to be misses, which would
also negate their impressiveness.

I might hope that if we could go back in time and do things over again,
the decision to drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been
made differently, but I think the circumstances probably didn't allow for
any other possibility. It was a really bad option, but it was the best
available.

-- Jeff, in Minneapolis

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When judging the actions of August 1945 one does need to remember the perspective of people at the time. As others have mentioned, the destruction of cities by bombing was a commonplace by that time both in the European and Pacific theaters. The use of an atomic bomb was, to some extent, a difference in method rather than a totally new tactic. Of course, nuclear weapons have different after-effects than firebombs, but that may not have been understood as much then as now.

There were other options, of course, but each had their problems. This isn't to say the nuclear bombing had no problems, but the commanders at the time felt it had fewer issues. Other options included:

Continued firebombing: This would have taken time, and probably caused as many or more civilian casualties as the atomic bombs did (albeit without the nuclear side-effects).

Invasion: Operations Olympic and Coronet were in the planning stage. It's hard to say how hard the Japanese would and could have resisted, but the impression, based on recent operations at Iwo Jima and Okinawa was that it would be brutal, with massive casualties on the American side and a fight to the death on the Japanese side. Thinking at the time was that anything that could eliminate the need for invasion was preferable.

Continued blockade: Some have argued that we had already strangled the Japanese supply lines by our submarine operations. This is true. So, the argument goes, keep the blockade an seige going until the Japanese surrendered. Again, it's hard to say how long they would have held out. And is starving them out really morally superior to bombing?

A final issue on all of these is the involvement of the Soviets. By August we had had a chance to see how they were organizing their occupation zones in Europe. I have to think that we wanted to limit their operations and their claim to an occupation zone in Japan. As it was, they were limited to a small area in the Kuriles as well as a sphere of influence in Korea. By the war ending when it did, the Soviets could not claim an occupation zone in the main Japanese islands. Think about it. Would it really be better to have had them occupy Hokkaido and perhaps the northern part of Honshu? How would the the world have been if there had been a North and South Japan in the same way there was East and West Germany?

A book I'd recommend on the whole topic is "Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire" by Richard Frank. He comes down on the side that without the atomic bombs, the Japanese were unlikely to surrender without invasion. It's an interesting read.

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"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Going by their experience of taking back the Pacific islands from rfelatively small garrisons of Japanese soldiers, I can see why the US military wanted a way to end the war without having to fight their way inch by inch across the Japanese Home Islands. I doubt that they would have had the stomach for the casualties they thought they were going to take.

Also look at the mentality of the Emperor, he couldn't surrender unless it was very obvious that there was an honourable way of doing so. Atomic bombs were a good excuse to surrender, there was no honour loast in notr fighting against such a terrible weapon.

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I'm not disagreeing with anything you said. But I just wanted to point something out. At some point in your explanation, you switch silently from "the American side" to "our". I assume that you are American, and that you assume that everybody will understand that. But remember that this is a board that is accessible worldwide, and there are a lot of people for whom "we" won't necessarily mean "American."

* Especially since you say you come from the "heart of darkness," which I can only assume means the Congo. :-)

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As above, so below

And the USSR probably would have kept Manchuria also.

I'm sure the quarter-million civilians killed by the Japanese in Nanking in 1937 (plus the millions more killed throughout China and Southeast Asia during the war) really cared about the bikering of 'international law' when it came time to stop the Imperial Japanese Army....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

But were the Japenese military convinced there would be no loss of honor? Their behavior speaks volumes to this topic.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board!

Dropping the atom bombs at the end of WW2 wasnt law.

Islamists arent a country, and would use nukes if they had them, so what is the point of the comparison?

Other than that, the reason the USA keeps a large store of nukes is to make sure that any country that might attack us knows that if they nuke us, we nuke them, and it is hard to win when everyone is dead. So, again, what is the point of the comparison?

It is easy to forget the international nature of the net and the may non-American members of this board. For that I apologize. I am indeed American, and slipped into the "our" form rather quickly. It's sort of the same as the way people identify with sports teams (We won!). I'm reminded of how someone made fun of this by pointing out "They won. We watched."

As for the Heart of Darkness, it's an ironic reference to where I live: inside the DC Beltway. No political statement intended there one way or another.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Others have responded to this and some of your other points, timb, but I did want to give you a thought or two here. I also need to clarify things a bit about the "demonstration" issue.

The focus of the American decision makers was not on killing Japanese civilians in large numbers, per se. It was on ending the war as quickly as possible. In one way, you are absolutely correct: the American side didn't give a hoot if it cost one or a million Japanese casualties. But they did care very much about the number of American casualties, and using the bomb was deemed to be the way to minimize those.

The point you make about the short time interval between the attacks is quite valid, especially since it took the Japanese authorities the better part of a day even to figure out what happened. For several hours, all they knew is that they couldn't contact anyone in the Hiroshima area by any normal means. They actually sent a plane to fly into town and report back, and it wasn't until they got that report and heard Truman's public announcement that they understood.

But there was a rationale for dropping the second bomb promptly, and it was the one I mentioned above: they wanted to end the war now. A long interval between attacks might have given the impression that the first one was a one-off. The military planners wanted Japan to get the message that they would be hit again and again if they didn't accept Potsdam right away.

One little-known fact is that there was a strong faction in the Japanese military that wanted to continue the fight even after Nagasaki and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. When it became clear that the Emperor was going to approve the surrender, those hard-liners made a coup attempt. It failed, but one can't help but wonder what might have been.

Another thing that recent scholarship has uncovered is that the American estimates of the cost of an invasion may have been on the low side. Military planners were expecting to lose half a million troops or more, but we now know that there were far stronger and more numerous Japanese Army divisions in the invasion area than the US was expecting.

Eta C is correct: the use of the bomb was (secondarily) intended as a message to the Soviets. This was another argument against a demonstration -- using the bomb against an actual city would give a much clearer picture to the world (and world leaders) of the Bomb's impact on the future of international relations.

Finally, it's important to realize that "America" -- that is, the government's
decision makers -- were not of one mind on these issues even at the time. It's arguable that they were arguing from ignorance since it was difficult to grasp the bomb's enormous destructive power before it was actually used, or even after Hiroshima (but before the surrender, only after which could the US personnel examine the site first-hand).

I guess what I really want to say here is that those who faced the decision to use the bomb had to reconcile a lot of gray areas. It's a lot easier to play that game with 20/20 hindsight.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Oops, I forgot a couple points. Another argument against an announced demonstration was that the Japanese might move American POWs into the target area (whether populated or not). By the way, lack of POW facilities was one of the target selection criteria, but not the highest.

And to Neverfly: the Potsdam Declaration -- the final demand for unconditional surrender -- did include language that warned (in general terms) about destruction of Japanese cities. This was hardly news to the Japanese, since said destruction was already well underway thanks to LeMay's strategic bombing campaign. But there were no specific warnings about specific targets. This was impossible anyway, since on any given mission the primary target might have to be bypassed due to weather conditions or enemy actions. You couldn't very well announce "We're going to wipe out Hiroshima tomorrow, or maybe Kyoto..."

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)