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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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So not to sound like I fully support the bombings, but they did touch in the movie about why it was a good thing. To save not only hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who would have invaded mainland Japan, but also the (potentially) greater amount of Japanese soldiers and citizens that would have died too. Millions to die because conventional war tactics weren't enough to scare the Japanese.
They were hard-core. They took the fire bombings (which had killed many more than the nukes) in stride. They raped Nanking with unimaginable horrors. Countless human atrocities in the name of "science"
The Japan of today in not the Japan on WW2. There's a good amount of people who would say the nukes were a merciful way to end the war. The US, in prep for the mainland assault, made the amount of purple hearts they thought they would need for just the wounded. Since the assault never happened, we still hand them out to this day
This is a really common line that is patently false, the nukes had very little to do with triggering the Japanese surrender. The meeting to discuss surrender occured days after the first bombing, and started prior to the second bomb. I wasn't privy to the Council discussions, obviously, but it is exceedingly unlikely they would sit around for days after the first bombing before meeting to discuss surrender. What did happen immediately prior to the surrender meeting was the Soviet invasion.
The nuking, of primarily non-military targets by the way, was largely a show of force demonstration to the soviets. It was not a "necessary evil" to save lives, and it was sure as hell not a mercy.
The Soviet invasion…
of the Kuril islands, Manchuria, and South Sakhalin. None of which were part of the Japanese mainland.
Yes, this did contribute to the surrender of Japan as they realized the USSR would not act like a neutral third party, but it did not cause the surrender.
The nuclear bombings of the mainland contributed quite a lot to the surrender effort as well, arguably moreso (or at least equally to) than the Japanese occupated territories.
It's hard to claim the nuclear bombs were a major contributor to their surrender when Japan was trying to surrender before the first bomb dropped. What made the surrender difficult was the ally's demand that the Japanese emperor be stripped of his power. This was a big ask at the time, since the emperor was directly tied into Japanese religion.
In addition to this, the American military were committing war crimes before the drop of the nuclear bombs. The American military was killing more japanese citizens in there multiple night time carpet bombing runs than they did with the nuclear bombs.
The nuclear bomb was not "to end the war" because the war was already over when Truman decided go ahead and use then. The nuclear bomb was to show the USSR our military capabilities to scare them once the war ended.
They had a minority interest in surrendering before the first bomb dropped. The Fire Bombing of Tokyo civilan centers (arguably a worse atrocity than the bombs) had their morale and their communications broken, but every source I've ever read concludes that they genuinely were not ready to surrender, and it would have taken an actual mini-coup to do so, one that seemed to not be happening.
That doesn't mean the bombs were necessary. They were, however, contributors to the surrender. The Japan preparing to rally from having their capital razed, civilian targeting worse than they had seen either side commit in the war, was suddenly struck with Hiroshima being vaporized.
I DO believe they were in the process of surrendering when the bomb hit Nagisaki.
Taking a step back, the bigger question is whether there are wrong ways to win a war. The US took Japan to surrender using 4(or more?) of the biggest civilian-targetting mass-death events in human history. We destroyed their civilian economy with lethal force in preference to destroying their military infrastructure. I think that was unacceptable.
But it DID contribute to the surrender.