After 60 Years, U.S. Reporter's Censored Stories About WW2 A-Bomb Effect Discovered

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I don't believe the Japanese were anywhere near to the point of surrendering.

You might not believe it, but that doesn’t change the fact that they were, whats more Truman’s government was well aware of it.


If you are interested, this site is the most complete I have managed to find: www.doug-long.com/ it has the whole process, what was known at both sides and is only slightly biased in American favour.

From your link:

Not exactly true, It prodded the small council to greater urgency, The Japanese government was well aware that they had lost the war but they believed that could get better terms by playing the Soviets against the US.( Since the red army was rolling in they thought the Americans would make better terms to end the war quickly before they had taken everything).
What they couldn’t do was accept a peace that didn’t entail the continuation of empire.
The hawks in Japan tried interpret the unconditional surrender as leaving the emperor at the mercy of the enemy, something no Japanese could accept under any circumstances.
The doves thought the American would see reason and this issue could be settled under the table.

This is incredible ignorant. The emperor only took part in these decisions when asked to by the government. The Japanese government was always checked by officers ready to start coups for far lesser issues then national surrender.

If you are interested in the Japanese deliberations Handos Japan's longest day is very good.


The atomic bombs accomplished three things:

1 it allowed Truman to accept the Japanese conditions without seeming weak. Emotionally it was very satisfying to the American public.
2 It allowed the US to evaluate the new weapon( since a conflict with the Soviets appeared imminent this was very important.)
3 It checked the Soviets intentions to expand both in Asia and in Europe.

From evertyhing i've read the actual duress on the Japanese government was a minor matter.

 

I've read something similar in an excellent collection of journalism called "Tell Me No Lies" by John Pilger. Can highly recommend it to anyone interested in the "other side" of the official story and its victims; there was a piece in there about the after-effects of the bomb and the "atomic plague" that struck Nagasaki.

Re: comments about Japanese atrocities in WW2 - few experienced these as much as Australian and New Zealand troops. My grandfather fought on the Kokoda Trail (after getting back from the siege of Tobruk) and was fortunate to have never been captured. The horrors of the Burma Railway and Changi Prison have become legendary in Australia, not so much for the cruelty of the captors, but the indomitability and endurance of the captives. The stories have been sanitised for my generation; I am glad, because so much is missing from them that I can't envisage the true nature of the scenario and can't imagine being in it.

I imagine that at the time, however, there would only have been a sense of relief and a hint of satisfaction when the bombs dropped on Japan and they surrendered. Certainly, Japan was a far greater concern in Australia than developments in Europe; Russia hadn't threatened to invade us, after all. Still, a certain measure of responsibility is called for; the amount of effort the Allies (and the US in particular) sank into rebuilding Japan is still hard to believe, given the nature of the conflict and its bitterness.

I do think that the A-bombings were instrumental in bringing the war to a quicker ending; invasions and occupations are always difficult. By demonstrating that you have the power to annihilate a city at will and without the logistical difficulties of invasion, you are far more likely to elicit compliance. I don't doubt that the other issues were relevant, too, but I hardly believe that two cities would be destroyed primarily to make a political point to a potential enemy rather than the one the Allies were then at war with.

 

Arawn's post is very much to the point, I think, particularly the three suggestions he makes at the end.

In the summer of 1945, the Japanese government sent out peace feelers through Moscow. These were ignored by the Truman administration. There is a strong argument, which is unlikely ever to be proven, that the A-bombs were dropped to impress the Russians, not the Japanese, just as Arawn suggests. On the other side of the coin, an attempted coup by Japanese military officers to prevent the broadcast of the Emperor's surrender message was barely defeated. The temptation to use such a powerful weapon must have been very great, whatever other conditions existed, not excluding revenge. The truth of it will not likely be found in anybody's memoirs.

 

Its pointless arguing about such things, as everything is justified and put down to 'its a war you idiot! What do you expect', just like My Lai - one of the greatest warcrimes in our parents generation, yet the worst punishment anyone got for it was 3 years house arrest and a pardon from the president - that more than makes up for the rape of women, slaughter of children and elderly and the desecration of a whole hamlet. Lets home that I never visit William Calley's jewlery shop!

 

Americans getting away unpunished for warcrimes with a slap on the wrist is the rule, as the Iraqis just learn again: The perils of colonial justice in Iraq.

 

According to the History Channel, the most reliable sources report that there would have been at least a million deaths from allied troops in the taking of Japan. Probably as many as ten million or more Japanese soldiers and civilians. I think less than two hundred thousand is better than ten million. I know, I know, this isn't humane, but for some reason it makes sense to me. Also, to be perfectly honest, during wartime I hope that our commanders will choose the option that is most devastating to the enemy and least painful to us. I value the life of one of our soldiers over the life of one of theirs. Any other way would make it impossible to wage a war.

 

Indeed, but if you start valuing one of your soldiers over 100 of their civilians your going down on a very slippery slope. I won't condemn the US usage of nuclear weapons though, WWII was such a mess that it makes condemning very difficult when every side is more or less guilty of war crimes. Others just a bit more than the rest.

 

Slith,

Japanese lives didn’t mean much to the american decisionmakers, witness the Tokyo bombings and the deliberate barbecuing of more then 100 000 civilians. I notice now that the server is down to my link to “the longest day”. But if you explore Doug Long’s site, you’ll notice it wasn’t the atomic bombs that made Japan surrender. It was the american assurances that the emperor would be retained. If the american’s had insisted on surrender without conditions, there would have been a great many more a-bombs that needed too be dropped, because to the japanese, Japan and the emperor was synonymous.
Many american’s seems to think it was a choice between the a-bombs or continued war, but the truth is that they were the ones who refused to negotiate a peace, so it’s rather disingeous to blame the japanese for not rolling over and die. (Ironically, the american tough stance allowed the soviet’s to take Manchuria and Korea. It’s entirely possible that with a negoiated peace, the Korean war, and mess that it is even today, could have been avoided.)

I’m kind of surprised that no one has brought up all the the supposed losses of the american invasion of Japan the the a-bombs prevented. That is usually the main justification for dropping them. This article explains the holes in that.

Historical what if’s is often hard and in fairness to Trumann and Stimson, second-guessing the japanese hawks wasn’t the easiest thing, yet the decision to drop the bomb was highly contentious even then.
The results of the first inquiry, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, was issued in July 1946. It declared,

Among the american leaders who saw the a-bombs as wrong and unneccesary you have these people:

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441. (Admiral, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.


I know, I know, this isn't humane, but for some reason it makes sense to me. Also, to be perfectly honest, during wartime I hope that our commanders will choose the option that is most devastating to the enemy and least painful to us.

In the Nazi german worldview, the russian swamp people was directed by their jewish overlords. Consequently they accelerated the extermination of the Jews in the hope that the Soviet body would die without it’s head. Let’s say this would have been true. Then you would have supported it right?

 

Brilliant post, Arawn, but I think your final comment is a little unfair in its implications.

 

Well thank you for your praise Cernak, but afraid it's mostly cut and paste.
I'll just tend of get irritated with people who has this unquenchable urge to make statements about things they know next to nothing about.

Why is my final comment unfair?
The area bombing doctrine, worked on the assumption that it was all but impossible to target the military factories, but if you destroyed the civilian infrastructure, supporting the industry, you would achieve the same results.

To the average grunt that seems reasonable -"I'll rather kill their children then let them kill mine."
The trouble with this was that these assumptions were wrong. In Nazi-germany production increased steadily, with a peak in november -44. Later on Germany had more hardware then they could use since they had virtually no fuel and the destruction of the railroads made it impossible to move it anyway.

Which suggests that the mass incineration of German civilians were unnecessary as well as a war crime.

In the Nazigerman mythos you had another faulty assumption, that the Jewish international was directing the Soviet union. If this is the case, wouldn't killing of the Jews be "the least painful to us and the most devastating to the enemy"?

 

I meant your implication that some posters here would support racial exterminations if it was thought that this would produce a desired political result. I don't think this is true. An aside: Stalin in fact was anti-Semitic, and had already laid the groundwork for a major purge of Russia's Jews--the "Kremlin Doctor's Plot"--when he suddenly died. Amazing how much one dictator resembles another.

The futility of the mass bombing of civilians as a war-winning measure is by now fairly well established, although it doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it whenever they have the means and the will. The issue was still being debated during WWII, but the fire-bombing of Dresden in February, 1945, when the war was obviously won, was clearly an atrocity. The morality of earlier bombings, when the outcome of the war was unknown, is less certain. Interestingly, Air Marshal "Bomber" Harris, commander of Great Britain's bomber fleets, was the only commander-in-chief not to be ennobled after the war had been won. Guilty conscience?

 

Not to be obtuse, but why can it be clearly classified as an atrocity?

 

Well -- Dresden was a civilian population center, and basically without notable industry. It was, somewhat unusual for a german population center at that time, still intact. Targeting a city as a whole, the allieds were that unprecise, bore the risk of killing many civilians. Burning it down to ashes over an entire week in attacks following wave after wave guaranteed it.

Burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes - didn't that quote go that way?

Another example: The city of Düren had no notable industry, except for fine fabrics and fine paper. It was a smaller city in a rural area. On the afternoon of November 16, 1944 Düren was destroyed to more than to 90+ %, and the city center totally wiped out. The raid caused approx 3.000 casualties and the city became completely uninhabitable. Before the raid population was about 22.000 - after the raid the survivors were homeless. And the winter of 1944 was harsh. After the raid only 4 people still lived in the city. An accident? I think not.

One evening Bomber Harris was stopped for speeding, and the bobby who stopped him looked the other way when he saw rank and uniform, but gave him a warning with on his way: "Drive carefully, before you get someone killed!" Harris replied something like: "I kill thousands every night." Ho-ho.

The guys in the general staffs knew exactly what they did. Dresden was not a valid military target. It was bombed anyway, like many other cities without importance, let alone military targets.

As an after-action assessment after Gulf-War-I found out*, the utter overkill on Iraqs infrastructure dealt out by U.S. precision weapons was found to have its root in the targets having some way found their way on the target list.

They were attacked because they could be attacked.

Same for Dresden. It was bombed because it hadn't yet been bombed. Simple enough.

Without enemy opposition or a price to pay for your raids, there is not a real reason for self-restraint.

* PS: The reports section CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: INFRASTRUCTURE TARGETS about the consequences of bombing infrastructure targets is especially sobering.

[ July 20, 2005, 16:52: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

Dresden was not, strictly speaking, a military target, apart from being a German city. No important industry. Not an important military base. It did, nonetheless, have two distinctions: (1), the city as a whole was one of finest surviving examples of Medieval architecture in Europe, and (2), it was one of the few important German cities that had not yet been bombed. Probably the second of these was decisive in
February, 1945. The raid was carried out with firebombs, aiming at maximum civilian casualties, which were certainly achieved. The Allies had clearly won the war as of Feb.1945; it was obviously all but over; there was no possible justification for terror raids on civilian populations.

The American author Kurt Vonnegut was a POW in Dresden on the night of the raid, which he describes with some feeling in his novel "Slaughterhouse 5".

 

Hmm. Okay, I guess I'm gonna have to ask for sources (NOT because I think "omg u n00bs r teh stoopid", but because I'm genuinely interested in learning more).

Reason being that Frederick Taylor claims in his book Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 that
A: according to the 1944 German High Command's Weapons Office Handbook there were 127 factories assigned individual three-letter codes (for purposes of secrecy and identification/tracking),
B: that that list is, according to the Dresden City Museum, "very incomplete,"
C: Dresden was therefore a highly significant industrial center,
D: Dresden was a vitally important transportation hub; during Otorber 1944, no fewer than 28 military trains passed through the city each day, altogether carrying ~20k soldiers
E: The bombing raid damaged 200 factories; 136 seriously, 28 moderately, 36 lightly. It all but brought industry to a stand-still.
F: The raid was not intended as a terror raid--the city center wasn't to be a real target at all--but human error resulted in massive damage to the strictly civilian areas of the city.

Now, I have to admit that Taylor's book is the only real reading I've done on the subject, so...correct me!

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

There you go. The article presents quite well both sides of the coin about Dresden in my opinion.