TL;DR - go get yourself some real quotes from primary sources link at
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm just briefly looking at the site it seems accurate despite it's domain. It seems to cite all the sources on the webpage if you don't want to take the link I suggested at face value or my word for it.
The second thing is if you read no other parts of this post, read the direct quotes from our generals and admirals at the time or in their memoirs.
That's fine, I guess. Not really sure why you would italicize the word "moment" if that were the case, but whatever. I just don't understand why you would classify an event that at least had some military and strategic purpose to it as worse than event such as the Holocaust, which served at best tenuous political ends, and resulted in the deaths of forty times as many people.
So...you were taking the word "moment" literally?
Regardless, you are free to think that. But then there is the argument that without the detonation of the bombs, a norm against nonconventional weapons use would never have been established, potentially leading to the loss of millions more. It certainly was a tragedy. Worst moment in human history? Not in my opinion. But then again, that's just my opinion.
The point is is that both the 1800 revolution and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both watershed events in all of human history. One shows humanity at it's best, the other shows us at it's worst, and both were perpetuated by the U.S. It would be fair to say the Holocaust was equally bad. But in terms of rate of human death, and method of death, this has never been seen before or since. Genocides are pretty common in human history. This sort of reasoning is similar to why time did not name Hitler man of the century, but Einstein. Guess what Einstein thought about dropping those two bombs on those two cities?
Japan is huge, so there is no way we could "completely" encircle them. Also, Sakhalin is extremely close to Hokkaido, so it wouldn't have been too much effort to ferry forces over. Not to mention the fact that telling our allies not to attack Japan, when we had spent years asking them to do just that, is laughable, and probably would have itself resulted in armed conflict. The Russians didn't want to see us in control of Japan anymore than we wanted to see them control it.
a total blockade of the island was easily possible, and we were already doing it in fact as Leahy directly quotes. Telling the USSR that we were reversing policy now that we had won the theater is not laughable....that's basically what we did via our actions right? And that it would have lead to war with USSR if we didn't invade or destroy those cities? pfft didn't we just go over how having the bomb in this case would have deterred any potential armed conflict? Russia was really, really banged up after the war, having an advantage over the U.S. only in manpower. Neither side may have wanted the other to have hegemony over japan, but to risk open armed conflict with our pacific forces for their own bloody invasion of war-torn Japan seems an unlikely move.
We had been dropping leaflets over major Japanese metropolitan areas for months warning of bombing campaigns. It obviously didn't work.
indeed there aren't many places to run to on an island with no vehicles and everything made of kindling and you don't have
specifics about when the attacks will be. Anyway, I only brought it up because you made the assertion that Russia wouldn't have believed we were willing to use the bomb on their armed forces if we didn't first slaughter some civilians. This would be a middle ground to an over the water detonation. The takeaway from this is simply that you're using too narrow a paradigm, and the quotes from our officers will show that.
No one is contesting that they were near the brink.
good. then i just don't get why killing 500000 more civilians was necessary. I don't take your argument seriously that the Russians wouldn't have understood the message from a demonstration, which is the only reason for the murders if you do indeed agree that japan was on the brink. U.S. had well proven by that point that we would do whatever it took to win.
Right. How did that work out in Cuba? Demonstrating an unwillingness to either (a) use atomic weaponry or (b) invade, would only strengthen their resolve. Why would they surrender if they thought they could wait around for the U.S. public to get war weary, and then get good terms?
those situations were night and day apart. no matter what happened, at the end of the day all we were going to ever accept was unconditional surrender. I knew we had let the emperor remain in power to more easily manage the country, but otherwise it was unconditional.
This just doesn't add up. The Japanese were not stupid. They could see this coming as well as anyone else. If you don't think they would have held out, then why didn't they just surrender prior to the bombings? Why wait until two major cities were destroyed? Pretty much everything indicates that they were planning to fight a U.S. invasion.
Not that any of this is relevant anyway, because the Soviets wouldn't have participated in such a blockade. Hence the reason why the decision to drop the bombs was made in the first place.
Their mantra/national code/honor didn't allow them to surrender prior to the bombings, although you'll see in the quotes i referenced more than one high ranking official thought continued fire bombing would have brought them to heel by years end. The concept of losing face is a big deal in many Asian cultures, unlike we view it in the western world.
The bombings brought the leadership back down to Earth in a hurry, that's for sure, but I'm simply pointing out that a siege of the entire island could have brought about the same effect within, a year or less (many Japanese historians also support this). They were definitely planning on contesting an invasion with their populace (had no soldiers really) but my argument has been why invade? let them plan the most ferocious defense they want then sit there until their food is gone.
"The intercepts of Japanese Imperial Army and Navy messages disclosed without exception that Japan's armed forces were determined to fight a final Armageddon battle in the homeland against an Allied invasion. The Japanese called this strategy Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive). It was founded on the premise that American morale was brittle and could be shattered by heavy losses in the initial invasion. American politicians would then gladly negotiate an end to the war far more generous than unconditional surrender"
I have no doubt that was their pipe dream. And Himmler thought something similar would happen with the Nazi government as he felt the U.S. would see them as essential to keep the Bolsheviks in check.
The simple fact is if you drop the paradigm of a U.S. invasion (we were island hopping to get to Japan, and even some of those invasions were highly questionable, but once we got to Japan itself invasion was not necessary because we had already deprived them of all their territories and destroyed their capacity to wage war) you'll see a couple of other potential options than dropping two nukes on two inhabited cities (we could have also chosen much smaller cities or cities we had already raped). Was dropping the bombs best for the U.S.? Almost certainly. Does that make it the right thing to do? For me, I'm not going to be able to get around the deaths of 500000 people without knowing for sure there were no other options. And there were other options.
"Another myth that has attained wide attention is that at least several of Truman's top military advisers later informed him that using atomic bombs against Japan would be militarily unnecessary or immoral, or both. There is no persuasive evidence that any of them did so. None of the Joint Chiefs ever made such a claim, although one inventive author has tried to make it appear that Leahy did by braiding together several unrelated passages from the admiral's memoirs. Actually, two days after Hiroshima, Truman told aides that Leahy had 'said up to the last that it wouldn't go off.'
Neither MacArthur nor Nimitz ever communicated to Truman any change of mind about the need for invasion or expressed reservations about using the bombs. When first informed about their imminent use only days before Hiroshima, MacArthur responded with a lecture on the future of atomic warfare and even after Hiroshima strongly recommended that the invasion go forward. Nimitz, from whose jurisdiction the atomic strikes would be launched, was notified in early 1945. 'This sounds fine,' he told the courier, 'but this is only February. Can't we get one sooner?'
The best that can be said about Eisenhower's memory is that it had become flawed by the passage of time.
Notes made by one of Stimson's aides indicate that there was a discussion of atomic bombs, but there is no mention of any protest on Eisenhower's part"
Did you read the article, because it's over 10,000 words and the part you quoted was from a single historian. You'll see i'll be using direct quotes from primary sources; several of them. basically that's a helluva selective quote you posted there and he's a secondary source, not primary one, which are frequently better. Allow me to use that same article to get some primary source quotes:
Dwight D. Eisenhower said:
In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."[104]
Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz said:
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.
Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy said:
The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade [emp. mine]and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. 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 war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.
This last one isn't primary it comes from his aide, but this is what MacArthur supposedly said according to Norman Cousins, in The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
Norman Cousins said:
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
By the way, when Nimitz asked for the bomb sooner, it was with the intention of using it against military targets while Japan still had remnants of an army and navy.Thank you for your help with my spelling and some details you taught me that I was unaware of. As i said I don't focus on war when studying history, so forgive my ignorance of some of the details. If you want to continue this debate then I ask going forward you ony address the essence and fundamentals of my argument and not nit-pick irrelevant minor factual errors. I think I've afforded you the same courtesy.
