The indefensible Hiroshima revisionism that haunts America to this day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The indefensible Hiroshima revisionism that haunts America to this day

«‹›54 »

Red and Black: Sep 5, 2011

It's the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing so here's a timely article from Salon.com

quote:

Here we are, 70 years after the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I�m wondering if we�ve come even one step closer to a moral reckoning with our status as the world�s only country to use atomic weapons to slaughter human beings. Will an American president ever offer a formal apology? Will our country ever regret the dropping of �Little Boy� and �Fat Man,� those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Will it absorb the way they instantly vaporized thousands of victims, incinerated tens of thousands more, and created unimaginably powerful shockwaves and firestorms that ravaged everything for miles beyond ground zero? Will it finally come to grips with the �black rain� that spread radiation and killed even more people � slowly and painfully � leading in the end to a death toll for the two cities conservatively estimated at more than 250,000?

Given the last seven decades of perpetual militarization and nuclear �modernization� in this country, the answer may seem like an obvious no. Still, as a historian, I�ve been trying to dig a little deeper into our lack of national contrition. As I have, an odd fragment of Americana kept coming to mind, a line from the popular 1970 tearjerker Love Story: �Love,� says the female lead when her boyfriend begins to apologize, �means never having to say you�re sorry.� It has to be one of the dumbest definitions ever to lodge in American memory, since real love often requires the strength to apologize and make amends.

It does, however, apply remarkably well to the way many Americans think about that broader form of love we call patriotism. With rare exceptions, like the 1988 congressional act that apologized to and compensated the Japanese-American victims of World War II internment, when it comes to the brute exercise of power, true patriotism has above all meant never having to say you�re sorry. The very politicians who criticize other countries for not owning up to their wrong-doing regularly insist that we should never apologize for anything. In 1988, for example, after the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf killing all 290 passengers (including 66 children), Vice President George H.W. Bush, then running for president, proclaimed, �I will never apologize for the United States. Ever. I don�t care what the facts are.�

It turns out, however, that Bush�s version of American remorselessness isn�t quite enough. After all, Americans prefer to view their country as peace-loving, despite having been at war constantly since 1941. This means they need more than denials and non-apologies. They need persuasive stories and explanations (however full of distortions and omissions). The tale developed to justify the bombings that led to a world in which the threat of human extinction has been a daily reality may be the most successful legitimizing narrative in our history. Seventy years later, it�s still deeply embedded in public memory and school textbooks, despite an ever-growing pile of evidence that contradicts it. Perhaps it�s time, so many decades into the age of apocalyptic peril, to review the American apologia for nuclear weapons � the argument in their defense � that ensured we would never have to say we�re sorry.

The Hiroshima Apologia

On August 9, 1945, President Harry Truman delivered a radio address from the White House. �The world will note,� he said, �that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.� He did not mention that a second atomic bomb had already been dropped on Nagasaki.

Truman understood, of course, that if Hiroshima was a �military base,� then so was Seattle; that the vast majority of its residents were civilians; and that perhaps 100,000 of them had already been killed. Indeed, he knew that Hiroshima was chosen not for its military significance but because it was one of only a handful of Japanese cities that had not already been firebombed and largely obliterated by American air power. U.S. officials, in fact, were intent on using the first atomic bombs to create maximum terror and destruction. They also wanted to measure their new weapon�s power and so selected the �virgin targets� of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In July 1945, Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed Truman of his fear that, given all the firebombing of Japanese cities, there might not be a target left on which the atomic bomb could �show its strength� to the fullest. According to Stimson�s diary, Truman �laughed and said he understood.�

The president soon dropped the �military base� justification. After all, despite Washington�s effort to censor the most graphic images of atomic annihilation coming out of Hiroshima, the world quickly grasped that the U.S. had destroyed an entire city in a single blow with massive loss of life. So the president focused instead on an apologia that would work for at least the next seven decades. Its core arguments appeared in that same August 9th speech. �We have used [the atomic bomb] against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor,� he said, �against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.�

By 1945, most Americans didn�t care that the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not committed Japan�s war crimes. American wartime culture had for years drawn on a long history of �yellow peril� racism to paint the Japanese not just as inhuman, but as subhuman. As Truman put it in his diary, it was a country full of �savages� � �ruthless, merciless, and fanatic� people so loyal to the emperor that every man, woman, and child would fight to the bitter end. In these years, magazines routinely depicted Japanese as monkeys, apes, insects, and vermin. Given such a foe, so went the prevailing view, there were no true �civilians� and nothing short of near extermination, or at least a powerful demonstration of America�s willingness to proceed down that path, could ever force their surrender. As Admiral William �Bull� Halsey said in a 1944 press conference, �The only good Jap is a Jap who�s been dead six months.�

In the years after World War II, the most virulent expressions of race hatred diminished, but not the widespread idea that the atomic bombs had been required to end the war, eliminating the need to invade the Japanese home islands where, it was confidently claimed, tooth-and-nail combat would cause enormous losses on both sides. The deadliest weapon in history, the one that opened the path to future Armageddon, had therefore saved lives. That was the stripped down mantra that provided the broadest and most enduring support for the introduction of nuclear warfare. By the time Truman, in retirement, published his memoir in 1955, he was ready to claim with some specificity that an invasion of Japan would have killed half-a-million Americans and at least as many Japanese.

Over the years, the ever-increasing number of lives those two A-bombs �saved� became a kind of sacred numerology. By 1991, for instance, President George H.W. Bush, praising Truman for his �tough, calculating decision,� claimed that those bombs had �spared millions of American lives.� By then, an atomic massacre had long been transformed into a mercy killing that prevented far greater suffering and slaughter.

Truman went to his grave insisting that he never had a single regret or a moment�s doubt about his decision. Certainly, in the key weeks leading up to August 6, 1945, the record offers no evidence that he gave serious consideration to any alternative.

�Revisionists� Were Present at the Creation

Twenty years ago, the Smithsonian�s National Air and Space Museum planned an ambitious exhibit to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. At its center was to be an extraordinary artifact � the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress used to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But the curators and historical consultants wanted something more than yet another triumphal celebration of American military science and technology. Instead, they sought to assemble a thought-provoking portrayal of the bomb�s development, the debates about its use, and its long-term consequences. The museum sought to include some evidence challenging the persistent claim that it was dropped simply to end the war and �save lives.�

For starters, visitors would have learned that some of America�s best-known World War II military commanders opposed using atomic weaponry. In fact, six of the seven five-star generals and admirals of that time believed that there was no reason to use them, that the Japanese were already defeated, knew it, and were likely to surrender before any American invasion could be launched. Several, like Admiral William Leahy and General Dwight Eisenhower, also had moral objections to the weapon. Leahy considered the atomic bombing of Japan �barbarous� and a violation of �every Christian ethic I have ever heard of and all of the known laws of war.�

Truman did not seriously consult with military commanders who had objections to using the bomb. He did, however, ask a panel of military experts to offer an estimate of how many Americans might be killed if the United States launched the two major invasions of the Japanese home islands scheduled for November 1, 1945 and March 1, 1946. Their figure: 40,000 � far below the half-million he would cite after the war. Even this estimate was based on the dubious assumption that Japan could continue to feed, fuel, and arm its troops with the U.S. in almost complete control of the seas and skies.

The Smithsonian also planned to inform its visitors that some key presidential advisers had urged Truman to drop his demand for �unconditional surrender� and allow Japan to keep the emperor on his throne, an alteration in peace terms that might have led to an almost immediate surrender. Truman rejected that advice, only to grant the same concession after the nuclear attacks.

Keep in mind, however, that part of Truman�s motivation for dropping those bombs involved not the defeated Japanese, but the ascending Soviet Union. With the U.S.S.R. pledged to enter the war against Japan on August 8, 1945 (which it did), Truman worried that even briefly prolonging hostilities might allow the Soviets to claim a greater stake in East Asia. He and Secretary of State James Byrnes believed that a graphic demonstration of the power of the new bomb, then only in the possession of the United States, might also make that Communist power more �manageable� in Europe. The Smithsonian exhibit would have suggested that Cold War planning and posturing began in the concluding moments of World War II and that one legacy of Hiroshima would be the massive nuclear arms race of the decades to come.

In addition to displaying American artifacts like the Enola Gay, Smithsonian curators wanted to show some heartrending objects from the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima, including a schoolgirl�s burnt lunchbox, a watch dial frozen at the instant of the bomb�s explosion, a fused rosary, and photographs of the dead and dying. It would have been hard to look at these items beside that plane�s giant fuselage without feeling some sympathy for the victims of the blast.

None of this happened. The exhibit was canceled after a storm of protest. When the Air Force Association leaked a copy of the initial script to the media, critics denounced the Smithsonian for its �politically correct� and �anti-American� �revision� of history. The exhibit, they claimed, would be an insult to American veterans and fundamentally unpatriotic. Though conservatives led the charge, the Senate unanimously passed a resolutioncondemning the Smithsonian for being �revisionist and offensive� that included a tidy rehearsal of the official apologia: �The role of the Enola Gay� was momentous in helping to bring World War II to a merciful end, which resulted in saving the lives of Americans and Japanese.�

Merciful? Consider just this: the number of civilians killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone was more than twice the number of American troops killed during the entire Pacific war.

In the end, the Smithsonian displayed little but the Enola Gay itself, a gleaming relic of American victory in the �Good War.�

Our Unbroken Faith in the Greatest Generation

In the two decades since, we haven�t come closer to a genuine public examination of history�s only nuclear attack or to finding any major fault with how we waged what Studs Terkel famously dubbed �the Good War.� He used that term as the title for his classic 1984 oral history of World War II and included those quotation marks quite purposely to highlight the irony of such thinking about a war in which an estimated 60 million people died. In the years since, the term has become an American clich�, but the quotation marks have disappeared along with any hint of skepticism about our motives and conduct in those years.

Admittedly, when it comes to the launching of nuclear war (if not the firebombings that destroyed 67 Japanese cities and continued for five days after �Fat Man� was dropped on Nagasaki), there is some evidence of a more critical cast of mind in this country. Recent polls, for instance, show that �only� 56% of Americans now think we were right to use nuclear weapons against Japan, down a few points since the 1990s, while support among Americans under the age of 30 has finally fallen below 50%. You might also note that just after World War II, 85% of Americans supported the bombings.

Of course, such pro-bomb attitudes were hardly surprising in 1945, especially given the relief and joy at the war�s victorious ending and the anti-Japanese sentiment of that moment. Far more surprising: by 1946, millions of Americans were immersed in John Hersey�s best-selling book Hiroshima, a moving report from ground zero that explored the atomic bomb�s impact through the experiences of six Japanese survivors. It began with these gripping lines:

�At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.�

Hiroshima remains a remarkable document for its unflinching depictions of the bomb�s destructiveness and for treating America�s former enemy with such dignity and humanity. �The crux of the matter,� Hersey concluded, �is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result?�

The ABC Radio Network thought Hersey�s book so important that it hired four actors to read it in full on the air, reaching an even wider audience. Can you imagine a large American media company today devoting any significant air time to a work that engendered empathy for the victims of our twenty-first century wars? Or can you think of a recent popular book that prods us to consider the �material and spiritual evil� that came from our own participation in World War II? I can�t.

In fact, in the first years after that war, as Paul Boyer showed in his superb book By the Bomb�s Early Light, some of America�s triumphalism faded as fears grew that the very existence of nuclear weapons might leave the country newly vulnerable. After all, someday another power, possibly the Soviet Union, might use the new form of warfare against its creators, producing an American apocalypse that could never be seen as redemptive or merciful.

In the post-Cold War decades, however, those fears have again faded (unreasonably so since even a South Asian nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India could throw the whole planet into a version of nuclear winter). Instead, the �Good War� has once again been embraced as unambiguously righteous. Consider, for example, the most recent book about World War II to hit it big, Laura Hillenbrand�s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Published in 2010, it remained on the New York Times best-seller list in hardcover for almost four years and has sold millions of copies. In its reach, it may even surpass Tom Brokaw�s 1998 book, The Greatest Generation. A Hollywood adaptation of Unbrokenappeared last Christmas.

Hillenbrand�s book does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of World War II or even of the war in the Pacific. It tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a child delinquent turned Olympic runner turned B-24 bombardier. In 1943, his plane was shot down in the Pacific. He and the pilot survived 47 days in a life raft despite near starvation, shark attacks, and strafing by Japanese planes. Finally captured by the Japanese, he endured a series of brutal POW camps where he was the victim of relentless sadistic beatings.

The book is decidedly a page-turner, but its focus on a single American�s punishing ordeal and amazing recovery inhibits almost any impulse to move beyond the platitudes of nationalistic triumphalism and self-absorption or consider (among other things) the racism that so dramatically shaped American combat in the Pacific. That, at least, is the impression you get combing through some of the astonishing 25,000 customer reviews Unbrokenhas received on Amazon. �My respect for WWII veterans has soared,� a typical reviewer writes. �Thank you Laura Hillenbrand for loving our men at war,� writes another. It is �difficult to read of the inhumanity of the treatment of the courageous men serving our country.� And so on.

Unbroken devotes a page and a half to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, all of it from the vantage point of the American crew of the Enola Gay. Hillenbrand raises concerns about the crew�s safety: �No one knew for sure if� the bomber could get far enough away to survive what was coming.� She describes the impact of the shockwaves, not on the ground, but at 30,000 feet when they slammed into the Enola Gay, �pitching the men into the air.�

The film version of Unbroken evokes even less empathy for the Japanese experience of nuclear war, which brings to mind something a student told my graduate seminar last spring. He teaches high school social studies and when he talked with colleagues about the readings we were doing on Hiroshima, three of them responded with some version of the following: �You know, I used to think we were wrong to use nukes on Japan, but since I saw Unbroken I�ve started to think it was necessary.� We are, that is, still in the territory first plowed by Truman in that speech seven decades ago.

At the end of the film, this note appears on the screen: �Motivated by his faith, Louie came to see that the way forward was not revenge, but forgiveness. He returned to Japan, where he found and made peace with his former captors.�

That is indeed moving. Many of the prison camp guards apologized, as well they should have, and � perhaps more surprisingly � Zamperini forgave them. There is, however, no hint that there might be a need for apologies on the American side, too; no suggestion that our indiscriminate destruction of Japan, capped off by the atomic obliteration of two cities, might be, as Admiral Leahy put it, a violation of �all of the known laws of war.�

So here we are, 70 years later, and we seem, if anything, farther than ever from a rejection of the idea that launching atomic warfare on Japanese civilian populations was an act of mercy. Perhaps some future American president will finally apologize for our nuclear attacks, but one thing seems certain: no Japanese survivor of the bombs will be alive to hear it.

What do you think? Was it a bad thing to vaporize hundreds of thousands of civilians or is it hunky dory to commit war crimes? Debate and discuss.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 01:49

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 7, 2024 09:23

7c Nickel: Apr 27, 2008

Chomskyan posted:

It's the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombing so here's a timely article from Salon.com

What do you think? Was it a bad thing to vaporize hundreds of thousands of civilians or is it hunky dory to commit war crimes? Debate and discuss.

War sucks and so did the bombings, but an invasion of the mainland would have been far worse. You can argue whether or not it would have ever come to that, but our military at the time certainly thought it would.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 01:58

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Regardless of how awful the atomic bombings were (why doesn't the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities over the previous months, a campaign against the civilian populations that killed many more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, come up for such criticism?), that was a very bad article written by someone with very little understanding of the Pacific War and its final stages in particular.

7c Nickel posted:

You can argue whether or not it would have ever come to that, but our military at the time certainly thought it would.

It would have almost certainly come to that. Even after the atomic bombings a group of Japanese army officers led a coup attempt to prevent Hirohito's surrender broadcast in the hopes they could continue the war, and the Soviets had no amphibious capability to speak of capable of launching a serious invasion of Hokkaido.

Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Aug 7, 2015

# ? Aug 7, 2015 01:58

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

7c Nickel posted:

War sucks and so did the bombings, but an invasion of the mainland would have been far worse. You can argue whether or not it would have ever come to that, but our military at the time certainly thought it would.

It's also a possibility that the atomic bomb would have been used in support of those invasions. Postwar analysis suggests that the Japanese had pretty well guessed where they were going to take place, so they would likely have been pretty hotly contested.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

Regardless of how awful the atomic bombings were (why doesn't the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities over the previous months, a campaign against the civilian populations that killed many more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, come up for such criticism?),

Probably because firebombs were not the most destructive single act of war in human history

Dropping the Atom Bomb was

Plus a lot of people do complain about the fire bombing, its just that firebombs had precedent. The atom bomb was and still is unprecedented.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:01

Timmy Age 6: Jul 23, 2011; Lobster says "mrow?"; Ramrod XTreme

Even after the atomic bombings, there were enough members of the Japanese military in favor of fighting on that there was an attempted coup to prevent a surrender.

efb

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:05

Timmy Age 6: Jul 23, 2011; Lobster says "mrow?"; Ramrod XTreme

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Probably because firebombs were not the most destructive single act of war in human history

Dropping the Atom Bomb was

Plus a lot of people do complain about the fire bombing, its just that firebombs had precedent. The atom bomb was and still is unprecedented.

Actually, not true! The firebombings beat out the atomic bombings.
http://www.wired.com/2011/03/0309incendiary-bombs-kill-100000-tokyo/

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:07

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Probably because firebombs were not the most destructive single act of war in human history

Dropping the Atom Bomb was

This is a debatable contention, to say the least.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:08

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

So here is the thing about carpet bombing in WW2, whether in Europe or Pacific. With technology that was available at the time you were considered a good shot if your bombardier got your payload with 1000 feet of the target. Multiplied by hundreds of bombers at a time, mutiple times a week, every week, all year. And Japanese industry was particularly decentralized and scattered throughout population centers.

How can you condemn one method because it proportionally hits more civilians without condemning the other? Precedent has nothing to do with whether or not it's a war crime. And to take it a step farther, how would the Allies win the war if strategic bombing was morally off limits?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:08

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I feel like the discussion of whether or not the Japanese would have surrendered or fought to the last man in a land invasion misses part of why the Hiroshima and Nagasaki is so upsetting to many people.

We dropped an atomic bomb on somebody.

We dropped an atomic bomb

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:09

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I feel like the discussion of whether or not the Japanese would have surrendered or fought to the last man in a land invasion misses part of why the Hiroshima and Nagasaki is so upsetting to many people.

We dropped an atomic bomb on somebody.

We dropped an atomic bomb

No poo poo we did.

The point is that a lot of the alternatives would have been, quite possible, even worse.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:10

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

N00ba the Hutt posted:

Actually, not true! The firebombings beat out the atomic bombings.
http://www.wired.com/2011/03/0309incendiary-bombs-kill-100000-tokyo/

N00ba the Hutt posted:

Actually, not true! The firebombings beat out the atomic bombings.
http://www.wired.com/2011/03/0309incendiary-bombs-kill-100000-tokyo/

I am not talking about total numbers. Obviously months of firebombs or a total ransacking of a city would have more deaths and damage.

That was why I said "single act"

No single action has ever been more destructive than dropping the atomic bomb.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:10

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

No single action has ever been more destructive than dropping the atomic bomb.

Only if you define single action in a somewhat arbitrary way.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:12

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Probably because firebombs were not the most destructive single act of war in human history

Dropping the Atom Bomb was

Except it wasn't? The firebombing of Tokyo was objectively worse. IIRC it was estimated by the Air Force that firebombing alone could erase every Japanese city by 1946.

The atomic bombs scared the Japanese into surrender because of their novelty... and because they didn't know we only had like 3 of them.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:12

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

The atomic bomb has conveniently twisted the narrative of the war in post-war Japan.

Because of the bombs Japan portrays themselves as being a victim of the war and this overshadows the fact that Japan started the war first place.

It's a pretty big reason why Japan continually refuses to acknowledge the rape of nanking.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:13

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

No poo poo we did, the point is that a lot of the alternatives would have been, quite possible, even worse.

The idea of something being worse than using an atomic bomb is honestly hard for me to swallow.

Frankly, a several month land battle is not as existentially horrifying as the face we dropped the atomic bomb on a country.

Horrible acts of war litter human history. Dropping the atomic bomb was a fundamental paradigm shift of human existence.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:14

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I am not talking about total numbers. Obviously months of firebombs or a total ransacking of a city would have more deaths and damage.

More like a single night of firebombing Tokyo killed more people than either atomic bomb.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:14

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

sean10mm posted:

Except it wasn't? The firebombing of Tokyo was objectively worse. IIRC it was estimated by the Air Force that firebombing alone could erase every Japanese city by 1946.

The atomic bombs scared the Japanese into surrender because of their novelty... and because they didn't know we only had like 3 of them.

Not only that but the US effectively destroyed food distribution networks across Japan by the end of the war: the Japanese people were in for mass starvation had they not surrendered.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:14

StandardVC10: Feb 6, 2007; This avatar now 50% more dark mode compliant

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I am not talking about total numbers. Obviously months of firebombs or a total ransacking of a city would have more deaths and damage.

The article is discussing a single night's worth of damage though.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:14

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The idea of something being worse than using an atomic bomb is honestly hard for me to swallow.

Frankly, a several month land battle is not as existentially horrifying as the face we dropped the atomic bomb on a country.

You don't know much about World War Two in the Pacific, and especially the land battles, if you think this.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:15

Jimbozig: Sep 30, 2003; I like sharing and ice cream and animals.

All the intentional bombings of civilians were despicable war crimes and the people in charge of terror bombing on both sides of the war were monstrously immoral. End of story.

Sure, continuing the war would have meant more civilian deaths, but only because both sides were doing their utmost to slaughter innocents with barely a fig leaf to pretend at decency. They could have, you know, not been mass-murderers.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:16

pesty13480: Nov 13, 2002; Ask me about peasant etymology!

It certainly was not a nice thing to have happened and I will grant that atomic weapons are especially unpleasant. That being said, I'm relatively sure that both cities would have been absolutely annihilated through conventional bombing much earlier into the war had they not been specifically "spared" for what happened to them. I somewhat expect that to be the case for all major cities had Japan not surrendered. I'm not going to argue or think about if Hiroshima/Nagasaki and atomic weapons sped up or slowed down the surrender, or if it was necessary to save American lives or not. I think the issue at heart is not so much about the bomb, rather whether or not terror campaigns against civilian population centers are acceptable. If they're not, then they're not; I am not sure that it matters if it's 500 B-29s participating with conventional weapons or just the one with extra special cargo. It's different, obviously. But not different enough? I could easily see it from the perspective of someone at the time, particularly if you're already down with firebombing campaigns. I also can see how someone from today would say that it's different because it was the first time someone dropped an atomic bomb on someone else? To me, one bombing operation with a single bomb and a single plane and X number dead does not feel different than one bombing operation with thousands.

That's my unsatisfying answer.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:16

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

You don't know much about World War Two in the Pacific, and especially the land battles, if you think this.

Or I recognize the atomic bomb as a uniquely horrifying moment in human history.

If you do not find the concept of an atom bomb existentially terrifying on a unique level we are at impasse.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:17

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Much ado about nothing.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:17

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

Mel's kind of talking about something different but I reeeealllly want someone who is anti-nuking Hiroshima to address this:

For the people on the ground it made little difference if you were killed by an atomic bomb in Hiroshima or a fire bomb in Tokyo, Osaka,Hamburg or Dresden. If you question the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the whole allied bombing campaign has to be questioned.

Japanese industry was especially spread out. Bombers were really, really inaccurate back then. Do the math. So was Allied urban bombing throughout the war justifiable or not?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:18

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:

You don't know much about World War Two in the Pacific, and especially the land battles, if you think this.

It took a few month just to take Okinawa: a small island, the Japanese resisted fanatically and over a hundred thousand died to defend the Island.

The home islands themselves would have being a hundred times worse

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:19

7c Nickel: Apr 27, 2008

DeusExMachinima posted:

. So was Allied urban bombing throughout the war justifiable or not?

And if you say no, how exactly should we have prosecuted a war where Japan was busy doing even more monstrous things than us?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:21

icantfindaname: Jul 1, 2008

anime

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:24

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Or I recognize the atomic bomb as a uniquely horrifying moment in human history.

I agree that it was a uniquely horrifying moment in human history.

However, I'd say it was far from the being the most uniquely horrifying event of 1945, or even of the whole loving war.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:24

ugh its Troika: May 2, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I feel like the discussion of whether or not the Japanese would have surrendered or fought to the last man in a land invasion misses part of why the Hiroshima and Nagasaki is so upsetting to many people.

We dropped an atomic bomb on somebody.

We dropped an atomic bomb

And? What about the atomic bomb at that time was so uniquely terrible compared to all the other ways used to attack cities during WWII? Do you expect everyone to fall apart into a tizzy of white guilt just because you surround "atomic bomb" with enough italics and underlines?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:25

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

icantfindaname posted:

anime

this might actually be a serious answer because a number of people refuses to believe japan did anything wrong because how could the land which gave us naruto and anime girl dating games be bad?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:25

DeusExMachinima: Sep 2, 2012; This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

icantfindaname posted:

anime

I wish you couldn't find the post button.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:26

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Are we actually arguing that conventionally firebombing entire cities with the express intent of killing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children was anything other than a horrific crime against humanity?

If you want to argue about strategic bombing and how it was impossible with the technology of the day to destroy Romanian oil fields or German military plants without inadvertently killing a ton of civilians, there's an argument to be had there. But deliberately murdering noncombatants just to terrorize the enemy population, no that's unjustifiable. I don't understand how that's a point in favor of the atomic bombs at all "but we were totally willing to murder even more people with incendiaries!" Uh, okay that was also hideous?

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:26

sean10mm: Jun 29, 2005; It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The idea of something being worse than using an atomic bomb is honestly hard for me to swallow.

Frankly, a several month land battle is not as existentially horrifying as the face we dropped the atomic bomb on a country.

Horrible acts of war litter human history. Dropping the atomic bomb was a fundamental paradigm shift of human existence.

Well of course it was scarier, that's why it ended the war.

But if we care about civilian death toll - which I thought was why we were upset about this poo poo in the first place? - then it wasn't anything special in the context of WWII battles or air campaigns. That's just a fact.

In WWII land battles in population centers produced absolutely insane civilian death tolls. Invasion didn't mean civilian lives being spared, quite the opposite.

It was actually the hydrogen bomb and the Cold War arms race that took the destructive potential of war into a completely different realm. Think one warhead worth 20 hiroshimas or more, and up to a dozen of those on one missile.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:27

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

VitalSigns posted:

Are we actually arguing that conventionally firebombing entire cities with the express intent of killing hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children was anything other than a horrific crime against humanity?

No, we're asking how, once you accept that those firebombings were horrific crimes against humanity, what exactly makes the atomic bomb worse.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:28

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

-Troika- posted:

And? What about the atomic bomb at that time was so uniquely terrible compared to all the other ways used to attack cities during WWII? Do you expect everyone to fall apart into a tizzy of white guilt just because you surround "atomic bomb" with enough italics and underlines?

If the idea of entering the age of atomic warfare isn't terrifying to you I do not think its something you can be convinced of in an argument.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:30

ugh its Troika: May 2, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

Here's what's indefensible revisionism: claiming that the Japanese were the victims in the entire situation in any way. Mabye they shouldn't have spent years raping and murdering their way across literally half of China, which, by the way, the Japanese government still hasn't apologized for or acknowledged to this loving day.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:31

Typo: Aug 19, 2009; Chernigov Military Aviation Lyceum
The Fighting Slowpokes

Mel Mudkiper posted:

If the idea of entering the age of atomic warfare isn't terrifying to you I do not think its something you can be convinced of in an argument.

But then your problem isn't with bombing Hiroshima per see, it's with the invention of atomic weapons period

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:31

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

N00ba the Hutt posted:

Even after the atomic bombings, there were enough members of the Japanese military in favor of fighting on that there was an attempted coup to prevent a surrender.

efb

None of those officers were high up, and they went ahead despite not getting support from anyone important. That coup was never going to succeed against the Emperor, and there's no evidence that without the bombings anyone of consequence would have joined them.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:31

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 7, 2024 09:23

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

If the strategy were to force a Japanese surrender without the atom bomb, the solution would be to categorically eliminate the possibility of invading the home isles. That was the Japanese military's plan. Their best hope was that the US would invade, and they could use everything they stored up(they were building reserves in Japan of everything for over a year for this eventuality). The prospect of no battle but utter starvation probably would have resulted in surrender. Would this have been better than the bomb, though? I'll let you guys judge.

# ? Aug 7, 2015 02:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The indefensible Hiroshima revisionism that haunts America to this day

«‹›54 »