Truman and Hiroshima

Jim Klag

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Lets hear form a Japanese Historian.... and other Historians...

LINK: https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/debate-over-bomb-annotated-bibliography#:~:text=Alperovitz, a prominent revisionist historian,Bernstein, Barton.

Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.---. The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. New York: Knopf, 1995.
Alperovitz, a prominent revisionist historian, argues that the bombs were unnecessary to force Japan's surrender. In particular, he posits that the Japanese were already close to surrender and that bombs were primarily intended as a political and diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union.
Alperovitz, Gar. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965.
The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. New York: Knopf, 1995.

  • Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
  • In this history of the end of World War II from American, Japanese, and Soviet perspectives, Hasegawa determines that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was the primary factor in compelling the Japanese to surrender.
Its all about the RED army...

LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/04/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-us-japan-history

That view is disputed by the Rev Wilson Miscamble, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame.

“Even after the Soviet entry into the war, certain elements of the Japanese military wanted to continue fighting. But it was Hirohito’s motivation, brought on by his recognition of the damage of the bombs, that brought him to engage directly with his government, and to order the surrender,” Miscamble said.


'He felt he had to do it': Truman's grandson on bombing Hiroshima
Read more

So, if the bomb was most decisive on Hirohito, and if Hirohito was the most decisive figure in ordering surrender, I think we can conclude that the bombs were the decisive element in bringing about Japan’s surrender.”

The US invasion of the Japanese home islands was not due until November, so some have argued Truman could have put off the decision to use atomic weapons for some time to see what effect the Russian intervention would have. Alperovitz argues that the timing of the bombs was aimed at stopping the war before the Red Army moved too deep int
o Manchuria.

“It is not an accident the bombs were dropped on 6 August and 9 August, just around the time we had expected the Russians to enter the war,” he said.


Miscamble argues that takes too narrow a view of the scope of the war and the number of lives at stake.

“The object was to end the war as quickly as possible, because lives were being lost all over Asia,” he said. “Would it really have been moral to stand aside so as to maintain one’s supposed moral purity, while a vast slaughter occurred at the rate of over 200,000 deaths a month? Is there not a tragic dilemma here – which innocent lives to save?”
What's your point? What went on in secret in Japan was not likely to be known in Washington and those secret discussions took place AFTER Hiroshima. Russia's declaration of war was a major factor in Japan's decision to surrender, but that declaration also occurred AFTER Hiroshima.
 

Jim Klag

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20-20 hindsight is a great thing. Nobody had a crystal ball, then, which would have come in handy. As far as Truman could see, this was what needed to be done - and he did it.
You're right. Based on the vicious, brutal fighting so far in the Pacific theater, no one could have guessed that the Red Army would have sliced through the Japanese army in Manchuria the way they did. And, at the time the Russians announced their declaration of war to the world, the B-29's were already enroute to Nagasaki.
 

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Jim Klag

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I have a simple question about all this angst over dropping the atomic bombs. Does anyone think it mattered to the Japanes by which bombing method they would be killed? We burned to death many more Japanese with napalm than with radiation. Many more died from TNT bombs than from nuclear energy. Do we think they cared? The cause of death seems to me to be irrelevant to the dead person. If we hadn't nuked them, we would have smashed them conventionally.
 

Joshism

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"Alperovitz's book, though "careless in [its] use of quotations," passing over all evidence that contradicts his thesis, and offering a benign view of Stalin (as noted by Yale historian Gaddis Smith in reviewing a 1985 republication) achieved considerably popularity when it was first published, because it fit so well with the anti-Vietnam War narrative widespread among the academic Left in the Sixties. But it does a disservice to the cause of historical truth and to the memory of all those American G.I.'s who lost their lives fighting against the barbaric Nazi and imperial Japanese regimes during World War II — as well as to those whose lives were saved as the result of the atomic bombings."
 

diane

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Joshism, that's one thing that happens to wars after all the people who fought them are dead and gone. What happened gets changed, for better or worse or something in between.

Part of the reason for the upheaval in the 60s was a reaction to the bomb - the anger at the military for doing such a thing seemed to trigger a lot. What else ya been doin' behind our backs! kind of feeling. Then there was the sense of never-ending war - having settled the hash of the Nazis and Imperial Japan, the new enemy were those godless red commies! Being the one country on earth that actually used the doomsday machine did something to our collective heads.
 

5fish

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75 years’ hindsight,
LINK: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/08/hiroshima-cover/

You know your government has done something unethical, immoral or just criminal when they cover it up, the horror of the A-bomb...

we didn't have
You know now our leaders knew they had done something unethical... a cover up...

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day has finally been published—60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller’s first-hand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

Snip...

General Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Over 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story.

snip...

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied MacArthur and struck out on their own. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

snip...

His dispatch began: “In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly—people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague.”

“Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.”

Snip...

Burchett’s article, headlined THE ATOMIC PLAGUE, was published on September 5, 1945 in the London Daily Express

The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as “Japanese propaganda” reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

Snip... other reporter...

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller’s 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, Gen. MacArthur personally ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Weller later summarized his experience with MacArthur’s censors, “They won.”

Snip... hope!

Last month, Weller’s son Anthony discovered a carbon copy of the suppressed dispatches among his late father’s papers (George Weller died in 2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a large Japanese newspaper. Now, on the sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombings, Weller’s account can finally be read.
 

5fish

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NPR has a report on this story... and a book about it...

LINK: https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/9038...journalist-who-exposed-the-hiroshima-cover-up

Hersey wrote a 30,000-word essay, telling the story of the bombing and its aftermath from the perspective of six survivors.

Snip...

She writes that when Hersey, who had covered the war in Europe, arrived in Hiroshima to report on the aftereffects of the bomb a year later, the city was "still just a sort of smoldering wreck."

"Hersey had seen everything from that point, from combat to concentration camps," Blume says. "But he later said that nothing prepared him for what he saw in Hiroshima."

Snip...


"It helped create what many experts in the nuclear fields called the 'nuclear taboo,' " Blume says of Hersey's essay. "The world did not know the truth about what nuclear warfare really looks like on the receiving end, or did not really understand the full nature of these then experimental weapons, until John Hersey got into Hiroshima and reported it to the world."

Here is the book...

1597886930167.png

LINK to the book: https://www.amazon.com/Fallout-Hiroshima-Cover-up-Reporter-Revealed-ebook/dp/B07Z45FSQG

Book Summary:

Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked—until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world.
 

byron ed

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...regarding any aspect of the war-ending attacks on Japan in WW2, it was all going to come out at some point,* and well within the lifespan of those who actually experienced WW2. So I'm not understanding the outrage, and I don't accept the outrage of anyone who wasn't party to WW2 in any way.

For the same reason I've never accepted the outrage of Confederate apologists, that outrage also fabricated long post-war.




- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* Should it have been reported right away the details of our defeating the Japanese at Midway? (We had broken their radio code). Had dropping two bombs in short succession worked to quash the suspicion we only had a few of these devices total? (so perhaps the Imperial Japanese rulers could just wait it out).

It's called having the courage to make tactical decisions at risk of dire personal culpability should it fail. It's called stepping-up. It's called not assigning a citizen's committee to study all possible options -- while each day hundreds of people are dying while we wait for the committee's report.

In regards these post-war armchair views by someone who wasn't there, it reminds me of a Miss America contestant expressing her "deep commitment" to "Peace in the World." Laudable, yet laughable.
 

5fish

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I don't accept the outrage of anyone who wasn't party to WW2 in any way.
Hindsight is 20/20 and you look back and see the mistakes and get outrage over the lack of respect for life and innocents. The Nagasaki A-bomb why so few days after the first A-bomb? It did not give the Japanese a week to responded to the first A-bomb.

In regards these post-war armchair views by someone who wasn't there
You did not read the Mother Jones article to its end and the effort our government did to cover up the effects of the bombing for a year. The first two reporters stories got effectively dismissed buy Hersey's finally let the cat out of the bag.

Snip...

MacArthur ordered Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital, and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.

Snip...

Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: they deployed their very own Timesman. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the science reporter for the New York Times, was also on the payroll of the War Department.

He was rewarded by being given a seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that he described in the Times with religious awe.

Snip...

Three days after publication of Burchett’s shocking dispatch, Laurence had a front page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people.

Snip...

His news story included this remarkable commentary: “The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms… Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described ‘symptoms’ that did not ring true.


Snip...

Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb.

Its seem our government did all it could do to hide the horrors the A-bomb. To hide what Weller and Burchett saw: A bomb that kills long after it has been used.

“In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki,” wrote Weller. A month after the bombs fell, he observed, “The atomic bomb’s peculiar ‘disease,’ uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here.”

If not for Hersey when would we have learned the truth...
 

byron ed

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Hindsight is 20/20 and you look back and see the mistakes and get outrage over the lack of respect for life and innocents.
The Japanese army invasions before and during WW2 killed far, far more innocents than the A-bombs. Far more. Let's be outraged about that. And btw, let's be outraged at hurricanes, earthquakes, mass murderers and disease, which continue to kill far more innocents than WW2 or the A bombs that ended it.

We today are in no way culpable for anything that happened in WW2. If there was no one around to see the self-flagellating, would there be self-flagellating? What a selfish exercise in a world that needs correcting of the problems of today.

The Nagasaki A-bomb why so few days after the first A-bomb? It did not give the Japanese a week to responded to the first A-bomb.
Again, the dropping two bombs in short succession worked to quash the suspicion we only had a few of these devices total, meaning the Imperial Japanese couldn't risk just waiting it out. If we had to resort to such a terrible weapon, at least make it convincing. It was to end a war. Again, it was to end a war.

You did not read the Mother Jones article to its end and the effort our government did to cover up the effects of the bombing for a year.
First of all, everybody knew bombs were used to wipe-out two Japanese cities -- and everybody that had a radio knew that by the next day. Second of all, there was no point in explaining the mechanics of the A-bomb attack to anyone. Any other country that had designs to use the end of the war to their advantage in taking over war-weakened countries was held in check. Yes, further invasions could have happened and several small ones did -- no one actually knew or not if major conflicts were truly over, within five years or so of the end of the war. Keeping the mechanics of the bombing secret was prudent and in the interest of free people everywhere.

Just stop for a minute to suppose what U.S. leaders had to gain personally from hiding the details of the bombing. That's right, nothing. There was something to gain in keep in keeping the details top secret -- stasis against further conflict in the world. Protection of the innocent.

You know It's ok to actually analyze things -- there's enough info. out there to do it -- we do not have to accept spurient articles embuing hindsight morality without analyzing the veracity of their claims. Being naive is sometimes a choice.

How is it by the way, that somehow by today we (you included) know the full truth of the mechanics of the first A-bomb attack?, which is to say there's nothing to be enraged over today for that incident.
 
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5fish

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and everybody that had a radio knew that by the next day. Second of all, there was no point in explaining the mechanics of the A-bomb attack to anyone.
No, Truman described the A-bomb as a large conventional bomb and did not mention the radiation and the after effects. General MacArthur keep the horror of the bomb from the public eye for a year until Hersey's article...

Being naive is sometimes a choice.
There is no naive since but a realization that Turman had choices and chose the easiest of them.
Far more. Let's be outraged about that.
We killed innocent people who were on the wrong side in a war. If our soldiers had gone in there a gunned tens of thousands there would have been outrage here and everywhere. Why is one okay and another is not?
 

Jim Klag

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We killed innocent people who were on the wrong side in a war. If our soldiers had gone in there a gunned tens of thousands there would have been outrage here and everywhere. Why is one okay and another is not?
It is sad that you don't know the difference between the two.
 

diane

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War very seldom kills the guilty, you know. They scurry to other countries or back under the rock they crawled out from, or into the background as if it all had nothing to do with them. Maybe justice comes to some but man's justice is usually not enough.
 

O' Be Joyful

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War very seldom kills the guilty, you know. They scurry to other countries or back under the rock they crawled out from, or into the background as if it all had nothing to do with them. Maybe justice comes to some but man's justice is usually not enough.

"Justice comes from the barrel of a gun."

Pardon me deeply for quoting Moa Zedong.
 

5fish

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It is sad that you don't know the difference between the two.
There is no difference because you know if we bomb a city indiscriminately today. It would be a war crime. You and others have fallen under the notion that walking up to an innocent and shooting them is bad but dropping a bomb from 10,000 feet is not murder... You have fallen into General Lee's fear:

Robert E. Lee Quotes
"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it."


Its hard to shot an innocent when they are looking at you but at 10,000 there on one is looking at you. Like, the drones today the more disconnected form the act the less terrible war is and the easier it is to grow fond of it...

@Jim Klag , @byron ed , and we add @O' Be Joyful, I know its hard to to accept that A-bomb the innocent was an evil act of our fathers and grandfathers generation. I know we want them all to be hero's but this great of destruction was an unethical and immoral act...

WE all want America to be what the media industry calls a in action films Mary Sue...
 

O' Be Joyful

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@Jim Klag , @byron ed , and we add @O' Be Joyful, I know its hard to to accept that A-bomb the innocent was an evil act of our fathers and grandfathers generation. I know we want them all to be hero's but this great of destruction was an unethical and immoral act...

No, I considerate it an unfortunate, but in the end a necessary act.
 

Jim Klag

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There is no difference because you know if we bomb a city indiscriminately today. It would be a war crime.
We bombed the crap out of Baghdad but we're not talking about bombing today, we're talking about in 1945 in a world f . . .ing war. Again your ignorance of the difference is sad.
 
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