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[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 70 points 1 year ago

I haven’t seen the film yet so I don’t know if they get into this, but a large number of the scientists involved with the Manhattan Project were working because they were terrified that the Nazis would build a bomb before the Allies. When, for several reasons, that failed to happen, they were relieved that the bomb wouldn’t have to be used. They felt betrayed when it was used against Japan, who were not developing a bomb and who could have been defeated using conventional means.

[-] sci@feddit.nl 39 points 1 year ago

the argument put forward was that continuing the war (with a possible drawn-out ground invasion of japan) would cost more lives than demonstrating 2 nukes.

[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago

Yes. that was the argument put forward. Similar arguments have been put forward for almost every military and major terrorist action ever taken. People can subscribe to the justifications, or not, as they see fit. The real thing to be cautious about is if you accept such justifications but only when your country is the one making them.

[-] Alto@kbin.social 28 points 1 year ago

Continued firebombing (which absolutely would not have stopped, and would've increased in intensity) alone would have killed far more than the bombs did.

[-] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 12 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but the argument put forward for everyone may not have been acceptable to some working on the project.

It is important to note that the physicists working on the gadget came from diverse backgrounds and had wildly different politics and moralities when coming to decide if they should work on what they saw as a doomsday weapon.

[-] Kes@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

I always see it posed as "we either nuked Japan or we invaded", but the nukes were absolutely used in preparation for a land invasion. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit into the highly controversial US strategy of strategic bombing Japanese industry prior to a land invasion, and they were not even the most deadly of our strategic bombing campaigns against Japan (the fire bombing of Tokyo was worse). A proper invasion of Japan post introduction of nuclear bombs commanded by one of our most infamously nuke happy commanders, Douglas MacArthur, planned to have US troops marching through the radioactive wasteland formerly known as Japan slaughtering anything that resisted them. It wasn't an either or, we weren't nuking Japan as an alternative to a land invasion, we were nuking them in preparation for a land invasion

[-] Feirdro@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Why didn’t they send a movie of the bomb to Hirohito with demands?

Of course, they’d killed a lot of our people in really horrific ways, so patience was running thin.

[-] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago

Because Hirohito was completely shielded from outside communications, and only knew what his top military leaders told him. Specifically the same military leaders who though it would be poetic for the entirety of Japan to die in combat before a single individual surrendered. Nuking 2 cities was the only way for the US to get Hirohito to see the actual consequences of continuing the war

[-] fushuan@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

They could have dropped the bombs on the coast or a non populated area as a warning, and act if they didn't surrender though. That's a demonstration, dropping it in a city/town was not, that was a masacre.

[-] reeen@aussie.zone 9 points 1 year ago

They dropped the first one on a city and that didn't get the point across, what would bombing a beach do?

[-] sci@feddit.nl 1 points 1 year ago

the plan was always to drop at least 2, to show it was not a one-off trick.

[-] PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Dude they dropped a bomb on a city, and they completely ignored it. In fact, there was an attempted coup by several the generals to kill the other generals who wanted to sue for peace. These were really militant military men.

The Kyūjō incident (宮城事件, Kyūjō Jiken) was an attempted military coup d'état in the Empire of Japan at the end of the Second World War. It happened on the night of 14–15 August 1945, just before the announcement of Japan's surrender to the Allies. The coup was attempted by the Staff Office of the Ministry of War of Japan and many from the Imperial Guard to stop the move to surrender.

They attempted to place Emperor Hirohito under house arrest, using the 2nd Brigade Imperial Guard Infantry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

So when people argue that the Japanese were willing to surrender without a bomb or a major military conflict, they are completely ignorant about the trajectory of what was actually happening. We're lucky that we didn't have to drop five nukes AND invade. And don't forget, the Russians were going to invade as well.

[-] skillissuer@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

that would be very expensive (in terms of materiel) demonstration that, considering 1. japanese mindset at the time and 2. the fact that nobody has been nuked to date, would be probably not effective at all. Today, this works because everyone and their grandma knows that nukes exist and they do work

[-] vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

Correct plus we fire bombed a lot of Japanese cities including Tokyo and that barely phased the Japanese government and especially the military. Imagine if instead of burning dresden to the ground we burned Berlin and the Germans responded the same as Japan.

[-] Noughmad@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

This was a time before cell phones, the emperor wouldn't even know that the blast happened.

[-] ox0r@jlai.lu -1 points 1 year ago

The usa looked at Nazis and went "wtf only we get to be like that" and thenattacked nuked Japanese civilians

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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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