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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2023
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That's one of the risks of kicking off a war.
Close to the end of the war, Japan -- which had made pretty extensive use of biological weapons against China -- was working on also hitting the US with biological weapons. We were far enough away that it would have been difficult, but where they had been able to employ biologicals, in Asia, they did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_PX
That being said, Japan wasn't even the expected target of the Manhattan Project. Germany would have been, but was defeated via conventional force prior to the project reaching completion.
I wonder why they didn't drop the bombs in more remote locations first to minimize victims and send a message... Estimates are that 130k to 225k people died, the vast majority were civilians that had no influence over their country being at war...
Because it would have been less-effective, I expect. The targets were chosen because they had military industry and had not yet been destroyed via conventional firebombing, which had already been done at mass scale in other places.
I think that it's important to understand that the atomic bombs were simply seen as something of a significant multiplier in the existing bombing campaign. One bomber with an atomic bomb could maybe do what a thousand bombers with conventional weapons might...but there were, in fact, thousand-bomber raids happening. That is, cities were already being set afire. The Manhattan Project simply permitted doing so with a significantly-lower resource expenditure.
EDIT: Also, to be clear, the US fully intended to ramp up to mass production and employment of atomic bombs, dozens a month, once production could be brought up, and would have done so had the surrender not occurred.
Today, partly because of (significantly more powerful) thermonuclear weapons and because we know that the first two bombs did result in a surrender, the first two atomic bombs maybe look like something of a clear bookend to the war, but that's for us in 2023; in 1946, they would have been another step -- if a significant one -- of World War II's large-scale bombing campaigns, something that had been growing for years.
The atomic bombings were war crimes, but so were the many previous fire-bombings of Japanese and German cities. The US was doing everything it could at that point to end the war.
Honestly, I'm of the opinion that the atomic bombings were legitimate, but the firebombings in Japan were mostly terror bombing and war crimes. The atomic bombs were indiscriminate in their destruction, but pointed towards legitimate military/infrastructure targets.
I'm of the opinion that fascists don't get to cry about the consequences of their actions, even if their former victims have become monsters themselves.
Arthur "Bomber" Harrington has an immortal quote to the effect:
"The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else and no one was going to bomb them."
You can see echoes of this mentality in Russia today, as they cry and moan about Ukraine having the sheer GALL to drone strike military targets in Russia. If one wanted to get particularly spicy, you might even note the actions of America in the Middle East prior to 9/11 and the reactions afterwards.
Ultimately, the great evil of the atom bombs wasn't their use to ensure a total surrender, it was throwing away that total capitulation by allowing the continued existence of the Imperial family and not executing every Imperial Army officer above the rank of lieutenant for their crimes in their conquered territories and against American POWs.
That's an odd take, the atomic bombings were fire bombings intended to destroy cities, unless you think the US didn't realize that would happen? The US was quite capable of destroying individual facilities. Is it legitimate to destroy a facility and everyone who works there? And their homes? And their families, and their kid's schools and everyone who goes to those schools and their doctors, and the guy who sells them snacks on the way home and his family and all his in laws and their houses and their doctors.
Seems a bit excessive.
The atomic bombings were not fire bombings. Fire bombings, as the name suggests, use incendiaries.
You know what the accuracy was for daytime bombing in WW2, even with fancy American bomb sights?
A mile.
A. Mile.
In Europe, British and American approaches differed because British bomber command put a greater emphasis on terror bombing against the Germans, while the American bomber command in Europe put a greater emphasis on industrial targets. You know what both approaches shared? Absolutely blanketing wide swathes of an area with ordnance because there was no guarantee of hitting a target otherwise.
Given that low level of accuracy available, I don't find arguments regarding collateral damage to be particularly compelling. No, what made US firebombing in Japan horrid was that American bomber command in Asia oriented quite explicitly towards attacking civilian targets. Incendiary testing in US trials was done against mock-ups of Japanese civilian housing, not industrial targets, even.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen as targets because of their military and industrial importance. However cruel and indiscriminate an atomic bombing may be, it was not simply pointed at civilians in the hopes of murdering as many as possible, unlike the fire bombings.
This is historically ignorant. The cities were chosen for their psychological effect.
Atomic bombs are incendiaries. Starting fire miles away is one of the key effects of the bomb. They can create firestorms.
You have limited supply of bombs, you go after targets. You don't waste them.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets.
Still took two bombs as is
Came close to not being enough, even then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
They tried to seize the recording of Emperor Hirohito's surrender speech before it could go out:
The morning the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, another thing happened: Russia declared war on Japan, invaded, and had made huge progress in the night. There's some evidence the guys at the meeting who decided on surrender had not heard of the Nagasaki bomb yet, though the bombs are the official reason Japan gives for surrender.