Manatee Slayer said:
-The Japanese had virtually no Navy or Airforce to speak of.
-The Americans had blockaded Japan, meaning they couldn't get any imported resources, which is nearly everything. lol
-The Japanese were terrified by the thought of the Russians coming, due to the fact they had lost to them before and that they would probably take over the country and install communism.
-Many high ranking officials were against the attack saying it was unnecessary and that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway.
-The only reason people think that the bombs won the war in the Pacific is due to American Propaganda.
Well, No, You're actually extremely wrong. Japan had stockpiled so much over the course of the last two years of the war(They believed that the Americans were massing off the coast and preparing to invade any day) that when the Americans did start destroying it all, they realized that the Japanese had purposely built weapons to kill Americans and in great quanities. They reverted their dated Anti-Air cannons for use against Shermans, They had dug in the majority of their military in the mountains of Japan.
They did have an air force which seems to be the thing people discount about them. Throughout the PTO, The American fighters usually fought only Imperial Japanese Naval pilots. The land based fighters in Japan were considered to be the best in the world at the time. Enough Ki-100's alone could take on multiple swarms of enemy bombers, but the result would still have the majority of the bombers be able to hit their targets. Along with that the development of the Shinden Pusher-fighter was nearly ready, and had been found to be too fast to track in a speedy confrontation.
Their resources, while meager, meant that they while they were unable to build in mass quantities, they were still able to build at an alarming rate. They would melt down their railroads and other infrastructure and re-purpose it as aircraft metal, gun metal, etc. Almost the entirety of their former air flotilla was broken down to create new planes like the A7M Reppu and the Ki-84 fleet.
And about the Russians, They were not afraid of the Russians. They believed that even with the Russians coming they would still fight them off. You're getting your fronts mixed up. Germany was freaking out at the end and most whermarct troops started to march west at the end because they didn't want to 'surrender' to the Soviets. The Japanese were a lot less picky. What people don't get is that the majority of the IJA was in China fighting of Chang Kai-sheik and Mao Zedong's forces, and Hirohito made it clear that if worst came to worst, they would redeploy into Korea if the home islands were lost.
High ranking officials? cite me a source and I can show you a liar. The debate about the dropping of the Atomic bomb was months in the making and every debate made most of the cabinet hate Truman a little more. Truman was the one who kept saying no. Truman was pretty much the little dutch boy with his finger in the dam. When he did cave in, he made sure that it was against targets that were militarily important.
this brings be to my next point. I find the dropping of Fat Man on Nagasaki a bit more debatable as an overall strategic move, however people fail to realize that Hiroshima was the Imperial Japanese Navies' home port. It's laborers and it's citizens were some of the highly skilled people in all of Japan. Nagasaki was a larger industrial city, but it was less of a useful target. Hiroshima was a justified target. It was preselected because of the simplicity of the matter.
If you nuked Tokyo, You essentially cut off the head of Imperial government, and denied them any way to sort through the rubble. There were so many factions in power in the Japanese government, that killing the emperor and destabilizing the entire country would only serve to further enrage it's population, which in turn made the invasion of the home islands even more difficult.
There was no if, ands, or buts about this. This decision was made due to the sheer logistics. Even McNamara, who had coordinated the Napalm raids that destroyed an average 65% of every major city, said that had the decision come down to him, he would've done the same. It comes down to the sheer numbers around it. They had predicted well over One Million Casualties for only the intial operation into Japan.
Thats One Million for D-Day. I want you to realize how many people that is. The U.S. Military at the time was around 2 Million for active duty, and 3-4 million in National Guard divisions(which made up the bulk of the actual frontline numbers for the U.S.). That means that within a span of a Month(Because Olympic only covered 2-3 months of combat, but the most casualties were estimated within the 1st month ONLY) you would lose 1 Million Americans, to either grave wounding, or death.
Now I don't know about you, and the supposed "propaganda" but honestly all roads point to using the trump. I'd take 246,000 Civilians in two days than 2 million over the course of 6 months. I'd take using it first and showing the world the horrors of this weapon, over it being overused in combat. It is almost universally accepted by even the Soviet Intelligence agencies, that in the end, the use of the atomic bomb that was nary the size of cold war bombs resulted in a global ideal that at anytime a single bomb could go off murder millions.
MacArthur in Korea wanted to use the bomb as well on the attacking Chinese, however, Truman knew that this move would signal to other nations that when your back is against the wall it is O.K. to use the bomb to destroy your enemies in combat. Had Truman not learned the lesson, seen the destruction of the first one, and authorized the use of the Atom bomb in the Korean war? We would've seen every country using it. Afghanistan 1980s, the soviets are getting pushed back, so they begin to Nuke Tora Bora in hopes of crushing the Mujahadeen, In Vietnam during the Tet, Nixon realizes that Cambodia is the main supply route of the Viet Cong, So he decides to not risk waging a private war, and nukes the entirety of the eastern half of Cambodia, which ends Vietnamese supply chains, but turns Indochina into a radioactive hellhole for 50 years.
I don't believe the hype. I've written 5 research papers on the subject, and the pros out way the cons every time no matter how you look at it. I've spoken with people who don't share my opinion, but each time the justifications are always the same. If you wanted to sacrifice a million men, in a war that the American public was starting to tire of, What made you any different than the Japanese?
Now, go ahead and say that I'm just an American who is blinded by propaganda(lol, u mad?), but I believe that the fear of the atomic bomb, the sheer destruction it wrought, and the realization of all powers that this was not something to play with, is, was, and always will be the single most significant event in the 20th century. It changed everything, Poltics, Military landscapes(for the worst in my Opinion), and even peoples views on war.
So in the end, You'd gladly sacrifice a Million Americans in a fatal attempt to "win" a war, but seeing as though they'd just hold out in Korea and China which further complicates your strategy, you'd be a genocidal maniac. And that's how Truman would've gone down in History. the decision he made was the only road to walk, And we still walk it today. We realize the destruction wrought. We see the film footage, and we wish this never to happen again. Yes the Cold war was a cluster-F about controlling nukes, but every side thought that day was the last day. now we have to be responsible and get rid of these weapons before they get rid of us.
The decision to do this was probably the best made in the entirety of the whole war. It's reasons were just, it's outcome was sketchy, but in the end everything worked out for the best. Even with the 50 years of rampant fear, I'd take that over 10 years of nuclear war any day. But God, Xenu, or Oprah Winfrey help us if we ever think it's a good idea to use them again. It would change all of the worlds dynamics again.
TL/DR: You're wrong. Bomb Right in this context. Get over it.
(Side note as well: Operation Downfall alone called for the use of seven atomic bombs)
