The bomb used on japan twice

[williamlayton]

The Japanese were not wacky--they were living out the culture they were raised in.
Blessings

[Dixie Dude]

I think it was a combination of two bombs with two planes destroying two cities, and Russia invading Manchuria.  Everything was falling apart fast, so they surrendered. 

[1911crazy]

We the USA was sending 2,000 bombers at night and day hitting Japan.  I still think we should of nuked tokyo it as on the way there but the drop was canceled.
What i'm trying to say about the day we dropped the first nuke on it anniversairy they show the pics of the damage but nothing is said about Pearl harbor in 12/7/1941?   We don't see any pics of PH on that day of there anniversairy when we bombed japan.

[Curtis]

.............and we don't see any pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the anniversary of Pearl.  I think that stands to reason and fail to see your point.
 
Curtis

[yellowtail3]

.............and we don't see any pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the anniversary of Pearl.  I think that stands to reason and fail to see your point.
 
Curtis

I think I understand his point: a strike on a military objective at the beginning justifies the retaliatory/vengeance incineration of a couple hundred thousand civilians, including children & their mothers.... and 1911Crazy would liked to have seen a few thousand more burnt corpses in Japan, just to drive the point home about who's boss.


...or something like that?

[hunt-m-up]

.............and we don't see any pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the anniversary of Pearl.  I think that stands to reason and fail to see your point.
 
Curtis

I think I understand his point: a strike on a military objective at the beginning justifies the retaliatory/vengeance incineration of a couple hundred thousand civilians, including children & their mothers.... and 1911Crazy would liked to have seen a few thousand more burnt corpses in Japan, just to drive the point home about who's boss.


...or something like that?

Change that to an "unprovoked offensive strike on other human beings..." and your description will be more accurate. The Japanese struck and killed husbands, fathers, sons, and there were women killed there as well.
Just a matter of semantics I guess.

[Cuts Crooked]

I think I understand his point: a strike on a military objective at the beginning justifies the retaliatory/vengeance incineration of a couple hundred thousand civilians, including children & their mothers.... and 1911Crazy would liked to have seen a few thousand more burnt corpses in Japan, just to drive the point home about who's boss.


...or something like that?

 
Hmmmm.................and the Japanese had their manufacturing bases in major population centers, why?
 
Got to remember, the support systems for the military are legitimate targets. Anyone who studies history knows that destroying the support systems is an important part of war...and some people willl use that fact as an excuse to scream about "innocent civilians" dying, even as they assure that they are in the line of fire.............deliberately placed in that position. Makes for really good propaganda fodder.

[snapdragon]

I think pictures of PH would be very appropriate on Nuke'm Day to remind people what started the war that resulted in the massive destruction and to show what may happen if you start a war you are not capable of winning.  War is not a gentle activity.  You start one with us, and we will not treat you gently.

[finisher]

But even if worst-case had won out - die-hards had won the day, which they did not - Japan was still defeated. They couldn't project power, they couldn't defend their homeland against air attacks, out of fuel and supplies, cities burned down... and they were gonna starve if it stretched much further. I think the US casualty estimates for Olympic & Coronet were overblown, but that's all guesswork now.

The US casualty estimates were all over the board.
Depending on how long it would take a invasion to end all fighting.
So estimates went as high as 1million!
So just a question to you,,,,What would you feel a good trade off of American lives would be to go with an invasion instead of dropping the bombs that ended it?
I think that ONE  American life is to much to lose to save any number of enemy lives !

********************
I think, M-G Willy, that what Yellowtail means (correct me if I'm wrong YT) is that the two bombs did what they did and hoorah, the war ended, but in response to 1911Crazy"s remark about not dropping enough,  YT meant why drop more than exactly what did the job. At least that's the way I understood it.


Hey, nothing like a good ol' one two KO. Double taps gentlemen ALWAYS!

[finisher]

We the USA was sending 2,000 bombers at night and day hitting Japan.  I still think we should of nuked tokyo it as on the way there but the drop was canceled.
What i'm trying to say about the day we dropped the first nuke on it anniversairy they show the pics of the damage but nothing is said about Pearl harbor in 12/7/1941?   We don't see any pics of PH on that day of there anniversairy when we bombed japan.

*******************
Most people as young as my generation are well aware of what sparked the war with Japan (although I have doubts about the knowledge of many beyond my generation). Honestly, IMO to point such an obvious thing almost reeks of bloodthirsty vengeance; a sentiment that is unbecoming of any nation to openly project (although we know that the truth of our sentiments were probably far from civil).


Of course you won't see pictures about Pearl Harbor  in Japan. Hell, most of the Japanese tourists that visit the memorial (I used to visit on every port stop) say that they don't even know the significance of it or even what it is(which I always thought was BS). Having spent quite a bit of time in Japan and gotten an understanding of the cultural mentality, I can tell you that the ones that do know are embarrassed and ashamed of the whole affair as it is a stain of dishonor to the very core of their national pride. These people really take this stuff to heart and soul and it was a fight they picked that they preferred to forget.


No one who picks a fight and gets beat down ever wants to talk about how it all started, and sure they're gonna bellyache about the beating but SO WHAT!!! let 'em if they don't want to own up. Geeze

[BBF]

A little bit of goating through commercial attacks helped them right along to start with Pearl Harbor

[yellowtail3]

A little bit of goating through commercial attacks helped them right along to start with Pearl Harbor

More than a little bit. Japan's attack against PH was not unprovoked, from their perspective. The viewed the US - by it's sanction (sound familiar?) and hostility as giving them a choice of giving up their ambitions in China/SE Asia - and their status as a major power - or go to war with them.


Barbara Tuchman did a nice write-up on this in her book "March of Folly" about examples of where nations took very bad FP courses, when there were clear alternatives.

[rio grande]

The bombings were unnecessary and immoral.   War crimes.
Indiscriminate mass killings of civilians. Turn that around. What if was your loved ones?

"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.⁹⁶ The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical:

 

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.^"

^"Major General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the century's great military historians, wrote in connection with the atomic bombings:

Though to save life is laudable, it in no way justifies the employment of means which run counter to every precept of humanity and the customs of war. Should it do so, then, on the pretext of shortening a war and of saving lives, every imaginable atrocity can be justified.^"

^{http://www.lewrockwell.com/raico/raico22.html}

 

[BBF]

IMO  Japan was as good an excuse as anything to try out this new and most importantly exculsive war toy.
 
For the nuke tossers here, it isn't exclusive anymore and it doesn't require a plane to deliver it.

[45-70.gov]

some one had to drop the first ones!!!!


any 'naysayer'  got a suggestion  who?....if not us


same ting with some one has to be the most powerful
any suggestion  who  if  not  us?


is it really that simple

[us920669]

45-70 - Yup
Rio Grande and other humanitarians - Given that Truman in 1945 could see only what he could see.  What he could see suggested that renegade Nazis in Korea may have been on the verge of splitting the atom (suspicious U Boat activity and radio intercepts, a strange new railroad line in Korea, etc), and that Japan certainly had a very mature bio-weapons program, which they had used in China, and that they had a long range sub carrying a seaplane (really better than a conventional CV for Special Operations), if they had done to us what we had done to them (smoked Ulithi, or Honolulu or even San Diego), and if it came out that we had the bomb but were sitting on it, we would not be able to forgive them to this day.
From another perspective, if Japan had deployed a WMD, they would not have been permitted to surrender, and Japan as we know it today would not even exist.
Why, one might ask, have we not publicized this aspect?  Because it was imperative that Hirohito and his circle be kept in so we could use Japan as a forward base in the Cold War, another time of very brutal, bare-knuckle activity, but given the nature of the Soviet state, absolutely necessary.

[BBF]

Not you or anyone else that uses or is duped into using their military as mercenary forces to enrich a group of real evil doers.
 
IMO Nukes exist to keep other countries from using theirs.

[finisher]

A little bit of goating through commercial attacks helped them right along to start with Pearl Harbor

*****************
 Didn't it also have something to do with them feeling insulted about being denied entrance into the League of  Nations?

[Larry L]

According to military estimates, the expected US casualties for the invasion of Japan would exceed 500,000 killed, and another 1,000,000 wounded. This was considered a VERY conservative number as other estimates were near double that. Obviously, we couldn't afford the wounded and the killed were not acceptable. Every man and woman in Japan at the time was training to defend their country with poison bamboo sticks and to pick up US arms to use against us. These are the same folks that came to us with Kamikasi attacks on our Navy. The Japanese military was not going to surrender but the Emperor made the decision and considering he was their deity, that's what they did. There was no 3rd bomb available to drop, we only had the two. It would have taken an additional 10 weeks to make another one and get it in position to deliver. In all of the military records I've reviewed, there was never any plan to drop nukes on Tokyo. We needed the Emperor for the transitional Gov't of Japan. Killing him would have just steeled the Japanese resolved to fight to the end. That's why we never targeted the Palace and it was a major no-no for any bomb crew to even consider it.

"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical:
[size=0px] [/size][/size][/font]

[/size]Got a linky to this. In my 8 year study of the Pacific War I've never seen or heard anything like this directly from the folks mentioned.

[/size]The Japanese were also working on a nuclear bomb and evidence found at an underground installation north of Honshu in 2006 shows that they were within weeks of having one. The plan was to load it in a sub, drive it into San Francisco Bay and detonate it in a Kamikasi attack. Had we not dropped ours when we did, history would be a lot different with a lot of US citizens dead. All things considered, we saved several million lives, US and Japanese, by dropping the bombs.

[yellowtail3]

From another perspective, if Japan had deployed a WMD, they would not have been permitted to surrender, and Japan as we know it today would not even exist.

Japan didn't have a 'weapon of mass destruction, other than some nerve gas like everyone else had... and that's no weapon of mass destruction, except in Dubya's brain. So far as delivery... an I-boat, with single-engined seaplane? they couldn't even start a forest fire with those things...

"The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical: ... ...

Got a linky to this. In my 8 year study of the Pacific War I've never seen or heard anything like this directly from the folks mentioned.

Then you've not looked very hard.

The Japanese were also working on a nuclear bomb and evidence found at an underground installation north of Honshu in 2006 shows that they were within weeks of having one.

That is utter hokum, 100% false. Japan had nowhere near the material resources or knowledge required to build a nuclear weapon - the Manhattan project cost the US a fortune. Japan couldn't even field a competitive fighter and maintain it in the field - nuclear weapons was far beyond their grasp. Utter fantasy that they were anywhere remotely near building nukes.

The plan was to load it in a sub, drive it into SanFrancisco Bay and detonate it in a Kamikasi attack. Had we not dropped ours when we did, history would be a lot different with a lot of US citizens dead.

Utter fairly tale, completely untrue. Where did you get that stuff? Provide a link or title?

[muznut 54]

For sure if the Japs had the bomb first they would have used it on us. My fathers oldest brother was in the first Marine division that landed on Guadalcanal god rest his soul and his other three brothers were fighting in Europe and the pacific and he was the youngest and was in the Navy and gearing up to go to the pacific. My father and my uncles were all thankfull that Harry Truman had the balls to drop nukes and end that horrible war.

[gypsyman]

My father had spent 3 1/2 years in the S.Pacific. Guadalcanal,Bougainvillea,Vella Savella, and a few others that are not mentioned in his papers. They were ready to invade Japan, and go to work on the mainland. I for one am happy that H.Truman made the decision he did. I might not be here typing away. In the world of that day, winning a war you did what you had to do. gypsyman

[us920669]

A considerable amount of work has been done documenting Japan's interest in the military effectiveness of bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera and a great many other pandemic-type diseases.  Since we never inspected Manchuria and all the records were hustled off to Washington under secure cover, the details have only come to light in stages, and Chinese claims of 500,000 casualties should be taken with a grain of salt.  However, there is no denying today that they devoted considerable resources to germ warfare.  The world has had little experience with this (yet), but experts believe it could be utterly devastating.
Ike, who was not told about the bomb, and MacArthur, who hoped to lead the troops ashore (after the fighting) and become president, were initially opposed but calmed down after considering all the facts.  Ike as president ordered quite a few more bombs to be built.  As for Leahy, he styled himself an expert on TNT and thought the bomb wouldn't work.
I can't give you anything to click on, but I would recommend The Nuclear Axis, by Philip Henshall, an engineer with defense and nuclear experience.  His work gave him access to Axis records and sites and the book is abundantly documented, like the German map of Manhattan with the circles drawn to show blast pressure.  Most of the lab work and budget was German, but norther Korea was the location of some sort of secret site, actually quite comparable to the mountains of New Mexico.  There are some questionable books out there on this, but Henshall avoids groundless speculation and carefully lays out a very persuasive case.  Mainstream media has avoided this, but the government was concerned enough to empower the Alsos project, nuclear experts following the troops in Europe quite closely to get a handle on the question.  Atomic energy was attracting attention at universities throughout the world, including Japan.  Without much coal or hydroelectric potential, they saw it as a valuable source of electricity. 
The large subs were real, not to be confused with the standard models the Japanese squandered with bizarre tactical limitations.  We took them out to deep water and sank them, leading one to wonder if they had already been rigged for a special mission.
The myth of Japanese technological inferiority is widely shared.  They lacked capacity and resources, but they had some very sharp engineers, and a lot of their work showed real promise.   [size=78%]    [/size]

[yellowtail3]

The myth of Japanese technological inferiority is widely shared.  They lacked capacity and resources, but they had some very sharp engineers, and a lot of their work showed real promise.

True, but a cursory examination of the cost of the Manhatten Project - of what went into ti - and comparing even a pared-down version to what Japan was capable of... not a prayer of snowball's chance in hell of them coming remotely close to an operational weapon. Not even in the right neighborhood. As it was, they didn't have a single operation aircraft that cold have taken off with Little Boy or Fatman, let alone deliver it. But then, in fantasy land, they're gonna take it by sub to SFO... heh heh heh...

Sure, they had good engineers... just not nearly enough of them, considering they were up against the biggest, most technologically advanced economy in the world. Japan was so far behind, in terms of human resources, that nuclear power wasn't in the realm of possibility for them.


Japan's inferiority is wonderfully illustrated by image of the prototype of the first Zero (vastly over-rated in postwar literature) making the trip from factory to airfield, towed behind.... an ox cart.

The big I-boats were interesting, but not very useful as subs. And you're right, if there was ever a sub force wasted by poor employment, it was Japan's.

[us920669]

In the early 1940s the tech leader was probably Germany, with the patents to prove it.  They were simply ahead of us in optics, radios and quite bit more.  And they had a lot of gold. Hitler drove out the Jewish scientists, but they weren't the only ones.  That a man of Heisenberg's prestige spent years spinning his wheels with heavy water seems absurd.  Delivery would have been problematic, unless a sub made a suicide run, something the Japanese were known for.  Henshall actually postulates - and that is exactly what it is - that the trigger was lost at sea, nailed by Ultra.  But again, the true situation is not as important as what Truman and Marshall thought might be possible.  If there was even a chance, they would have realized the importance of getting off the first shot.
Yes, the I boat seems to have been a dud, but to go anywhere in the world and launch even a flimsy seaplane could be very dangerous, especially if it was carrying glass jars full of plague-infected fleas.
I read that Zero book too - great stuff.  The plane did outperform ours for several years, and the basic philosophy for an interceptor turned up in the F-86, which kicked butt in the Korean War.  Zero was just under-gunned - nothing like a few 50 BMGs.   

[yellowtail3]

I read that Zero book too - great stuff.  The plane did outperform ours for several years, and the basic philosophy for an interceptor turned up in the F-86, which kicked butt in the Korean War.  Zero was just under-gunned - nothing like a few 50 BMGs.

There have been so many - which one are you thinking of? 
I think the Zero is a good example of Japan's basic weakness. It's attributes - range, low-speed agility and climb angle - all were products of Japan not having any really modern engines (like R2800, Merlin, DB, or BMW 801). That, and they gave junior pilots waaaay too much input on design (and everybody likes a manueverable, fun-to-fly bird). Post-war writers lauded it as super fighter - as did our guys early in the war - but a clear-eyed look back shows it realy wasn't all that hot. Its early success was due to numbers, shock, and poor tactics on part of allied pilots, not technical superiority. Once we figured it out, it was doomed - even before the US put 2nd generation fighters (F6F, F4U, etc) into the fight. Even the much-maliged P-40 was, looking back, a better fighter by almost every measure except low-speed turning, climb, and range - so long as the P-40 kept his craft's strenths (training tactics tactics training) the Zero was in deep trouble - and we'd figured that out by late 1942, and word was getting round.
Then there's the Ki-61, Japan's attempt to build a competitive fighter, using the ME-109's DB engine. The Japanese were incapable of making a reliable copy of an engine the Germans turned out by the gazillion, after adapting it to Japanese manufacturing technique. Then, they couldn't train enough qualified ground crew to maintain it... and they couldn't make very many of them. At the same time, the US was coming up with... let's count 'em - P-38, P-47, F4U, F6F, P-51, all manner of bombers - all in HUGE numbers for two wars, and all better than anything the IJA/IJN put into squadron service. Japan didn't have anywhere near the number of engineers, draftsmen, and designers to pull that off... and building a nuke from scratch was harder, I think.
Anyhow... check out Eric Bergerud's Fire in the Sky - excellent read on the subject.

.. in the F-86, which kicked butt in the Korean War.

That's what the tell us, but the truth is more... nuanced. If you consider encounters where the US pilots (many of whom were WW2 vets, very experienced) went up against Russain pilots flying for the North Koreans, the -86 doesn't look nearly as good.

[wncchester]

"...expected US casualties for the invasion of Japan would exceed 500,000 killed, and another 1,000,000 wounded. "
 
And Japanese estimates of the coming invasion's death toll of their own people ranged from 4 to 10 million, aside from the wounded. 
 
Japan had already lost more people in the fire bombing of Tokyo alone than died in Hiroshima and Nagaski combined.  The dead don't care how they die; the total loss of only some 200 thousand from two bombs was a kindness both to Japan and the many other people in the hands of Japanese who had standing orders to kill as many of their helpless victims as possible before giving up to suicide.  Being in the bloody hands of the NAZIs was very bad but being under control of the Japanese was far worse.  Anyone into anti-American navel gazing and introspective whining about the effects of those two bombs needs to get a better perspective on the total picture!

[us920669]

The only place I saw the ox cart reference was in Zero Fighter by Akira Yoshimura.  It was written for the Japanese market and is bound to have a bit of arm-waving.  I was more amused by the idea of transport by river barge.  They kept running aground because of poorly dredged channels, forcing the rousting of peasants from villages and contributing to war weariness among the rural population.  I also thought the F-86 proved to be a great little dogfighter in part because the Mig was designed to intercept bombers at high altitude.
About the bomb, which as I say might not be true, there is no reason why all sub-assemblies, assembly fixtures and skilled hands could not have been German.  I have read that Japanese universities were graduating engineers and technicians to be ready when atomic energy became feasible for them.  I still think BW was a more potent threat.  We had to be getting good intell out of Manchuria late in the war.  I am still surprised they didn't try to contaminate our logistics train. 

[finisher]

]

Got a linky to this. In my 8 year study of the Pacific War I've never seen or heard anything like this directly from the folks mentioned.The Japanese were also working on a nuclear bomb and evidence found at an underground installation north of Honshu in 2006 shows that they were within weeks of having one. The plan was to load it in a sub, drive it into San Francisco Bay and detonate it in a Kamikasi attack. Had we not dropped ours when we did, history would be a lot different with a lot of US citizens dead. All things considered, we saved several million lives, US and Japanese, by dropping the bombs.
****************
Although I do think that the US took the most logical course of action in order to end the war and to deter Russia, I really have to wonder about this notion of a Japanese A-Bomb. Not to knock your research but one has to be very careful (at least when researching on line) when sifting and separating the BS from the genuine facts.

Again, this is not an attack, but a German A-Bomb... I can readily believe that; but the Japanese? This sounds like information out of Orwells "Ministry of Truth".

[Cuts Crooked]

The bombings were unnecessary and immoral.   War crimes.
Indiscriminate mass killings of civilians. Turn that around. What if was your loved ones?

The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman's own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.^"

Admiral Leahy was one of those who did not understand the basic concept of destroying the enemies abiility to wage war by attacking it's source of war material and production, a long accepted tactic used for thousands of years. Interestingly Leahy also disaproved of the entire war plan for the Pacific theater even before nukes were an option. He preferred war as waged in the Atlantic and European theaters, they were something he could wrap his head around.