Poll: were the nukes dropped on japan in WW2 really needed to win?

[icame]

If the Americans had to invade Japan to end the war, the death toll would be higher. Possibly MUCH, MUCH higher. That, to me, makes it okay for them to of been dropped.

 

[manaman]

They weren't needed to win. They certainly helped though. And America and Russia both wanted Japan. Things might have gotten a lot worse if America hadn't made such a show of force.

And every bomb has a silver lining, as such a show of force established atomic weaponry as a way to keep any sane leader from starting a major conflict.

And every bomb also has enough nuclear force to level a major city. The creation of the atomic bomb and the way the Americans showed it off basically hammered one message into the Russian psyche. "Must have." which subsequently led to the cold war and many VERY NEAR flirts with nuclear holocaust. We lucked out on that one, but if you ask me to choose one, a major war where a large number of people will die, or a coin toss where either no or ALL people will die, I'll take the war.

And you probably would have had that war. Tensions between the US and the USSR where only kept in check by the arsenal of nuclear weapons each possessed.

It's likely without them we would still be talking about the use of nuclear weapons, just this time it would be about their use in WWIII, if of course we both somehow managed to be alive, and living close to each other as it's likely globalization (and the advances in technology that have come from economic trade) would have been put off for decades if not generations. Remember china developed nukes as well shortly after the USSR did. It was just time for them, they have changed the face of modern warfare and are quite likely responsible for the fact that no major world powers went to war with each other again in the decades leading up to the era of globalization we are in now.

 

[Pierce Graham]

They were. MacArthur gave an estimate to Truman of roughly 1 million casualties, on the American side alone. It was the quickest and easiest way to win the war, and with much fewer lives lost. Certainly it was the most brutal and terrifying, but by far the most effective.

 

[dystopiaINC]

could you imagine the cold war if japan WAS DIVIDED LIKE VIETNAM and KOREA? it would have been a nightmare and thats not even going into the loss of life to end WW2. if we let Russia get involved they would have demand half of japan, and then tried expanding communism. not to mention it would suck to fight the whole war almost to the end and have Russia swoop in at the end and get half the credit.

nope. nuke japan, save lives. prevent WW3

Why would WW3 break out? What makes Japan so important that it means the two superpowers would finally declare war?

Also, DRAMATIC CAPATILISATION and dramatic phrases like EXPANDING COMMUNISM are excellent ways to appear sensationalist.

the point i was getting at was that if the soviets took half of japan and we ended up fighting for it like Korea and Vietnam things would have been different. would it have started world war 3? probably not i may have exaggerated but i was just saying it would have been a game changer on how things were played during the cold war and who really knows, it would have just changed the chess board and who knows what would have happened then was all i meant dude.

 

[Nieroshai]

I think I recall correctly that the Japanese were actually hitting harder and harder up until the bombs, and even then the first bomb only made them mad until they realized we could keep dropping until there was no Japan. So yes we could have won without nukes, but two cities in exchange for the many more who would have died is seen by many as the lesser of two evils. All premature death is tragic and I wish it had not come to that. But the Sword of Damocles that threatens is really a better alternative than an equal battle where both fight until someone runs out of troops altogether.

 

[orangeban]

could you imagine the cold war if japan WAS DIVIDED LIKE VIETNAM and KOREA? it would have been a nightmare and thats not even going into the loss of life to end WW2. if we let Russia get involved they would have demand half of japan, and then tried expanding communism. not to mention it would suck to fight the whole war almost to the end and have Russia swoop in at the end and get half the credit.

nope. nuke japan, save lives. prevent WW3

Why would WW3 break out? What makes Japan so important that it means the two superpowers would finally declare war?

Also, DRAMATIC CAPATILISATION and dramatic phrases like EXPANDING COMMUNISM are excellent ways to appear sensationalist.

the point i was getting at was that if the soviets took half of japan and we ended up fighting for it like Korea and Vietnam things would have been different. would it have started world war 3? probably not i may have exaggerated but i was just saying it would have been a game changer on how things were played during the cold war and who really knows, it would have just changed the chess board and who knows what would have happened then was all i meant dude.

Why would it be different? This isn't the Japan we know today, one of the richest countries in the world, to the people of America it's just some ass-backwards crazy Oriental country, the only difference between it and Korea/Vietnam, is that the general public hated Japan with a boiling passion because of the war.

 

[Saltyk]

I've heard that we didn't actually need to drop the bombs and that invasion was not likely going to be necessary as well. Some historians believe that Japan was already on the verge of surrender before we dropped the bombs.

Personally, I don't buy it. If they were on the verge of surrender, you would think that dropping one bomb would have been enough to force such a thing. Also, we showed the world the horror and power of nuclear weaponry. I don't think it is a stretch to say that using them on that day prevented them from being used at a later date and possibly in a much worse fashion.

I think I recall correctly that the Japanese were actually hitting harder and harder up until the bombs, and even then the first bomb only made them mad until they realized we could keep dropping until there was no Japan. So yes we could have won without nukes, but two cities in exchange for the many more who would have died is seen by many as the lesser of two evils. All premature death is tragic and I wish it had not come to that. But the Sword of Damocles that threatens is really a better alternative than an equal battle where both fight until someone runs out of troops altogether.

As I recall we lied about having more bombs. We only actually had two, but we told Japan that we could keep dropping those bombs (not sure how often we bluffed it as weekly or monthly most likely) until we wiped Japan from the globe.

 

[halfeclipse]

The Japanese were prepared to fight down to their last soldier. And then some. It was/is part of their culture.

Sure the nukes were harsh and bloody, but they may have avoided a much larger bloodshed.

I've actually gotten mixed messages about that. I've heard they were prepared to fight to the last man, but I've also heard they were on the verge of surrender. Obviously it can't be both, and either way I don't think it justifies millions of civilian casualties.

Little of Column A, little of Column B. The Emperor was considering surrender (Mainly he wanted assurances that the imperial family wouldn't be completely removed from power à la the German Kaisers in WW1. The Allies weren't willing to give them this at the time.) At the same time the military leadership of Japan was absolutely against surrender no matter the cost, to the point where they planned to execute a coup if the Emperor decided to surrender. Whether or not Japan would have folded from a pure land invasion would have come down to if that coup succeeded or not. Given how close it did come to success (Yes, even after having two cites leveled, their generals still wanted to continue the war, and were willing to assassinate the Emperor to do so.) that's not a risk I'd be keen to take. Even less so when you consider that if a land invasion of Japan did go poorly, those bombs would have been used anyways, and the poor understanding of fallout at the time called for a minimum 48 hour wait before sending soldiers into the blast area.


Of course that's without taking into account other factors relating to the decisions cost/benefit equation. Without that quick surrender, the Soviet Union would almost certainly captured some, if not all of Japan, with all the suffering and deaths that would entail. As well it wasn't the worst option the allies had to offer, simply the most dramatic. Conventional bombing of the cities would have been even worse.

 

[Kinguendo]

The Allies recieved 5 different scenarios in which the Japanese were willing to surrender and accept identical terms to those accepted by America... 7 MONTHS before they surrendered. The nukes were completely unnecessary as with those 7 months of bloodshed.

 

[Sansha]

It was either the nukes, or a full-scale invasion, which would have cost more lives and have taken a lot longer.

Thing is, they asked for surrender then dropped one. Then repeated that process. They were prepared to drop a third, but the Japanese Emperor finally surrendered, against the wishes of his war cabinet. They wanted to keep fighting, thinking surrender would be 'dishonorable'.

True, but I'd rather have a bit of dishonor than millions more corpses.

 

[Nieroshai]

I've heard that we didn't actually need to drop the bombs and that invasion was not likely going to be necessary as well. Some historians believe that Japan was already on the verge of surrender before we dropped the bombs.

Personally, I don't buy it. If they were on the verge of surrender, you would think that dropping one bomb would have been enough to force such a thing. Also, we showed the world the horror and power of nuclear weaponry. I don't think it is a stretch to say that using them on that day prevented them from being used at a later date and possibly in a much worse fashion.

I think I recall correctly that the Japanese were actually hitting harder and harder up until the bombs, and even then the first bomb only made them mad until they realized we could keep dropping until there was no Japan. So yes we could have won without nukes, but two cities in exchange for the many more who would have died is seen by many as the lesser of two evils. All premature death is tragic and I wish it had not come to that. But the Sword of Damocles that threatens is really a better alternative than an equal battle where both fight until someone runs out of troops altogether.

As I recall we lied about having more bombs. We only actually had two, but we told Japan that we could keep dropping those bombs (not sure how often we bluffed it as weekly or monthly most likely) until we wiped Japan from the globe.

I don't know how many we had, but we live-tested several in the middle of nowhere so Fat Man and Little Boy were not the only nukes ever made up til the end of the war. So we may have had ten at the very least, but I doubt we did all that life fire practice and only took the weapon into the field with two rounds in the clip as it were.

 

[Curlythelock]

No, the dropping of the atomic bombs was never an act of desperation because the US feared that it could not defeat Japan. They were dropped to avoid the financial and human costs of invading Japan.

 

[Commissar Sae]

No and I've already gone through the reasons why twice on this site. Don't feeling like giving the same history lesson again.

Oh Fine, no it was not neessary and most people have a wildly distorted view of that war in general. Original estimated body count for a full invasion of Japan was estimated at 465,000 mostly wounded with an estimated 109,000 casualties over three months of combat. This assuming that the Japanese fought tooth and nail with the same resources they had at Okinawa.

The thing is Japan was exausted from the war already by that time. Most of the urban centers were destroyed in firebombings (which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians) and nobody but the military elite really wanted to continue the war.

To anyone saying that every man woman and child would have fought to the death I present the evidence that only a handful of GIs were killed during the occupation, and those were mainly for gambling debts, not nationalistic vengeance. And the GIs did plenty that would warrant their brutal murders during the occupation.

The bombs were dropped for 2 main reasons, to justify their expense to the American people and to threaten the soviets who had just invaded Korea ousting the Japanese within days. (Something the military radio chatter was talking about far more than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the days after the bombing.)

Edit: Furthermore Japan was already trying to surrender! They had sent a request through Switzerland that Japan would surrender, but only with the condition that the Emperor remain blameless for the war and be left in peace. (Something which happened anyway.)

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

to win? no. We didn't drop the two nuclear devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki just for the hell of it. They were seen as weapons of war, and we used them to make the Japanese Empire surrender so we wouldn't have to invade them. The death toll of both nukes totaled to about 500,000 if you account both the blast and the resulting radiation. Most of these were Japanese civilians, with a handful of Japanese soldiers as well as a few American POW's. Had we launched a full scale invasion of Japan, the war would have gone on for at least another year. The death toll for the Americans would easily have doubled from 400,000 to 800,000. The amount of Japanese that died would also be astronomical, as the Japanese were taught to fight to the death, and they've done that with their colonies, not this is their homeland. the Death toll for both sides would be much higher for both sides. I'm not saying we should use nukes more often, just that, given the alternative, it wasn't a completely stupid idea.

This. On top of that, it showed the power of the nuke and why it was something we should NOT use often. And if that hadn't been done, then some one else would have used it somewhere else, most likely.

 

[Sean951]

No. NO NO NO. The bombs were not necessary. No matter what anyone tells you, they weren't. The bombs weren't even dropped on Japan to end the war. They were dropped on Japan to threaten the Soviets.

Japan was on it's final legs. USA had already invaded and was in control of some Japanese territory. The only reason they didn't surrender when Germany did was out of vain pride. They didn't want to lose face. But they were close to surrendering.

At the time Japan was suffering from poverty. They were almost entirely reliant on food being imported from their China colonies. A naval blockade between Japan and mainland Asia would have stopped food going in and Japan would have been forced to surrender with relatively little bloodshed.

Nothing justifies the use of the atomic bombs on Japan, except perhaps the fact it prevented the Cold War from escalating into a full blown conflict. It was done to intimidate any future enemies America might have had. This is proven by the dropping of the second bomb three days after the first one. How can this act be justified? The first bomb, maybe, if we ignore what I've already said, but the second one? Not at all. Three days is not long enough of a time to expect a country to surrender in any war, ever, after an individual attack. Dropping the second bomb was simply an action to tell other countries, "Yes, that massive damage we did on Japan. We can do that again, we have more than one bomb." Or why didn't they drop the bomb into the ocean? To show Japan they meant business? Nothing justifies America's actions.

EDIT: I personally believe Japan's surrender (conditional, of course) was only months away. Japan knew they couldn't win. They had known for about a year they couldn't win. The only reason they hadn't surrendered, was out of pride.

You do realize the firebombing campaign actually produced more immediate casualties than the nukes, right? Not to mention the estimated casualties from the invasion. I've seen some reports that they were literally beginning to arm the general populace with primitive weapons with the goal of killing as many Americans as possible.

Also, why would the US accept a conditional surrender from Japan, we had no desire to fight them again, and wanted them to know they were beaten to the point they couldn't pull a Germany and start up a new war in 20-30 years. While they did serve the secondary purpose of warning the world the the US could literally unleash hell with a single bomb, that was not the primary reason. Not only was Japan unwilling [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan] to end the war, casualty estimates [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall] tended to be upwards of 1 million for the U.S. over the course of the invasion, going as high as 4 million. The estimates for Japanese dead and wounded went to the tens of millions. There was even talk of dropping an addition 7-15 nukes during the invasion (General Marshall didn't think they would surrender) and the Japanese were fearful of gas attacks in retaliation for their use of gas against the Chinese.

 

[Drexlor]

It wasn't necessary, but it cost less lives than a land invasion would have. It ended the war a lot sooner too.

 

[coolkirb]

Well it wasnt needed but it saved a whole bunch of US soldiours, The US had taken back all of Japans colonies and the main island would still not surrender.

 

[zehydra]

No. And a land invasion wasn't required either.

 

[Sean951]

The Allies recieved 5 different scenarios in which the Japanese were willing to surrender and accept identical terms to those accepted by America... 7 MONTHS before they surrendered. The nukes were completely unnecessary as with those 7 months of bloodshed.

They were dismissed as they ran counter to Allied policy at the time, which called for unconditional surrender.

 

[Commissar Sae]

The Allies recieved 5 different scenarios in which the Japanese were willing to surrender and accept identical terms to those accepted by America... 7 MONTHS before they surrendered. The nukes were completely unnecessary as with those 7 months of bloodshed.

They were dismissed as they ran counter to Allied policy at the time, which called for unconditional surrender.

Yes the deaths of hundreds of thousands was such a better alternative to losing a few votes. And thats why I hate politicians.