Hiroshima (1946)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

by pseudolus • 12 months ago

120 261 12 months ago

newyorker.com

pseudolus• 12 months ago

https://archive.ph/N672J

mulnz• 12 months ago

Thank you. Scrolled for 10 minutes through predictably nightmarish comment wars for this.

jalapenos• 12 months ago

Interesting to see the difference in writing style back then. Lots of long sentences. Kind of the opposite to the LinkedIn-style writing we see today, spitting out as many sentences and paragraphs as possible. Like you can see the generations' attention spans in their form of writing.

mixmastamyk2• 12 months ago

Been watching some old movies lately and its amazing to watch simple scenes stretch on for five minutes or more. Its almost like there was nothing else to do.

avhception• 12 months ago

At first I'm irritated by this, but once I adapt I actually like the time it gives me as a viewer to appreciate the subtleties of what's the characters and what they're up to.

makeitdouble5• 12 months ago

Its almost like there was nothing else to do.

Until now I forgot that people saw theaters as social venues, would eat buckets of popcorn, go the toilet etc.

From that lens, viewers fully focused and digesting every second of the movie was definitely not the average target.

asdff• 12 months ago

A whole generation reared on cigarettes and black coffee with no tech addiction. Yeah, these were pretty focused times.

makeitdouble5• 12 months ago

Long sentences are fine if your value form over communication.

Marking it on attention span makes it sound like convoluted and rambling sentences were universally good in the first place. I'd argue the contrary for a magazine or news outlet.

defrost9• 12 months ago

  A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb.

Unsurprising for the time given the context.

While people far from Japan made much of the uniqueness and power of a single bomb destroying a single city for those on the ground it was just another single city destroyed overnight by bombing .. the 73rd such city destroyed in a relatively short duration of time.

The destruction and death in Hiroshima was on par with the destruction and death in Tokyo when that was firebombed.

eschulz• 12 months ago

This piece made a big impact on me when I read it like five years ago, and if I recall correctly there was a young doctor there who was one of the few interviewed who stated that the bomb's use was possibly a war crime. He did like 48 hours in the hospital as thousands upon thousands of burned and dying walked from afar to the completely overrun clinic.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

[…] and if I recall correctly there was a young doctor there who was one of the few interviewed who stated that the bomb's use was possibly a war crime.

Was the dropping of the bombs any worse than the fire bombings that had been taking places for months? LeMay didn't seem to think so.

slibhb• 12 months ago

There was no nuclear taboo in 1945. Looking back, people forget that.

wat100003• 12 months ago

I think we were very lucky with the timing such that atomic bombs could be used in warfare just twice.

Imagine if development had been delayed a little while and the war ended without any atomic bombs. The bomb would still be built and improved. The falling out of the USSR with the other Allies would still happen. The Soviets would still get the bomb and there would still be an arms race. But would the Cold War have stayed cold without an object lesson in what nuclear warfare actually looks like? I suspect not. Even with those object lessons, it took a while for the consensus to emerge that nuclear war must be averted no matter what. That bit in Dr. Strangelove where the general said we’d only “get our hair mussed” in a war with just 10-20 million dead was pretty much the real attitude of the Air Force leadership at the time.

prmph5• 12 months ago

Yes, I understand that Japan gave up, not so much because of the bomb, but mostly because of the Soviet invasion and capture of Manchuria (and the implied threat of an invasion of the mainland), after the war in Europe had been won.

But I still struggle to understand the Japanese mentality. Were they OK with the prospect of city after city being atom- or fire-bombed, so long as no ground invasion occurred?

makeitdouble5• 12 months ago

The war was dictated by a religious leader, to some (most?) there was just no stopping it until it tells them to.

InTheArena4• 12 months ago

This is mostly untrue. Most of this narrative comes from Soviet propaganda that was later propagated by anti-Western and anti-war groups in the United States. More recently, it's gotten more attention as Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov use it as a useful tool to build their narrative that only Russia was responsible for World War II's victory and to justify their constant threats of nuclear warfare.

The historical record is very clear, as is Hirohito's own statement at the time:

"Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.

How, then, are We to protect the millions of Our subjects and atone before the spirits of my Imperial ancestors?

This is why We have ordered the Empire to accept the terms of the Joint Declaration. "

InTheArena4• 12 months ago

Additionally, the Japanese leadership was welcoming a land invasion. They believed that a land invasion would result in unacceptable casualties, forcing the United States into a peace that would allow Japan to continue occupying China and many of the sized territories. That's how disconnected from reality the leadership was.

The sad thing is that there is a non-zero chance they where right. There was considerable concern about that from the war leadership at this point. The allies _dramatically_ underestimated the forces that the Japanese had marshalled at the two invasion sites, and it would have been not very good. The alternative that the Navy was pushing was a starvation blockade of Japan. This probably would have been succesful but led to millions more lives lost in Japan, and a almost inevitable civil war in Japan.

defrost9• 12 months ago

The question I addressed was about the specific ethics of the specific case of "using the (atomic) bomb".

For survivors of a city destroyed overnight, with a great many friends and relatives dead, others injured or suffering the follow on results of malnutrition, disease, etc. there's little to separate the ethics of the use of an atomic weapon from the ethics of the use of tonnes of HE and incendiary weapons.

The most famous comparison, Tokyo Vs Hiroshima, has little to distinguish them from the PoV of a survivor.

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/09/22/tokyo-hiroshima/

Again, for context, 72 Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were each leveled in single bombing raids before Hiroshima.

Any debate about the killing of civilians to "save US soldiers" from invaders predated the use of atomic weapons by a number of months when the policy to flatten all of Japan from the air first started.

Atomic weapons were developed for use against Germany, with the German surrender prior to a field testable weapon being built, with the imminent collapse of Japan on the horizon, it was a race by those military at the head of the Manhattan project to have clean field targets before the conventional bombers worked through their list.

Hiroshima was to be destroyed by US forces either way.

The question should be less about the ethics of spending an ungodly amount of money to destroy a city with a single bomb, and more about the ethics of destroying a city for considerably less cost with multiple bombs in a mass raid.

I very much suspect a great many regular people in Japan were very much not okay with seeing their fellow citizens destroyed in a war being pursued by other elements of Japanese society.

refurb2• 12 months ago

I think the other thing to keep in mind is the cultural differences in how the West vs East think about government and the individual.

After living in Asia for a while, having political discussions with the people who live there, and exploring the differences in governance there, it’s not surprising there was indifference. You see this spectrum of though across many Asian countries from the authoritarian ones like China to the more democratic like Singapore.

Unlike the West which has a history of the relationship of the individual with the government and its leadership, Asia is much more influenced by Confucianism.

While people like to describe it as “what is good for the group versus what is good for the individual” I think that’s not an accurate description. It’s much more of a belief that governance happens “up there” and isn’t relevant to a commoners life.

The Eastern view of government is much more hierarchical and detached from the individual than in the West. There is strong sense that any one individual is not that important overall and that governance is a realm of the upper class, with the lower class on the receiving end rather than where power originates.

So for someone in Japan, the decisions during the war and the consequences thereafter are not theirs to judge or influence, only theirs to endure. There is a sense of fate and inability to change what happens, so it’s not really worth spending time thinking about.

Synaesthesia6• 12 months ago

The singular horror of this event really is so difficult to describe, definitely one of the low points of human history which we must vow to never again repeat, under any circumstances.

OgsyedIE• 12 months ago

I totally disagree about the difficulty of describing horror, since the linked article is one of many to have received critical acclaim for providing quality descriptions of WW2 experiences (my recommendation is 1952's The Naked Island).

Agree about the necessity of the never again stuff though, even though we've been failing at that continuously.

jwilber• 12 months ago

Well, op may be making the point that even the best description of horror is little compared to experiencing it. Watching a video of the horror itself (e.g. combat footage, a beheading, open-heart surgery) pales in comparison to experiencing it firsthand.

prmph5• 12 months ago

Man, the whole war was horrific.

The Japanese did things that were arguably even more horrific than the bomb; read up on unit 731 and the rape of Nanjing. I'm sure those who experienced those things would have far preferred dying in a flash.

The German did the holocaust, Babi Yar, etc.

The Allies did various fire-bombings.

The current singular taboo around nuclear weapons kind of misses how destructive and horrific the whole war was. This was total war on a scale that is hard to imagine today. To be fair modern nuclear weapons pack a punch that far exceed those atoms bombs.

ricksunny3• 12 months ago

Any global consensus on avoiding repeating this low point in human history needs to acknowledge the prime movers behind birthing the bomb into existence in the first place. Much ink has been spilt debating morality, but on the raw mechanics the historians are in alignment with each other - doesn't matter if you ask Richard Rhodes, Robert S Norris, or Alex Wellerstein:

  Vannevar Bush, more than any single individual, scientist or non-scientist, stands at the center of the bureaucratic decision to feasibility-test the fission chain reaction.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/233904

(compsci & s/w engineers can love VB all they want for As We May Think, but the man had some serious and arguably unnecessary blood in the short term, and decades of existential fear in the long term, on his hands. The silence of his legacy has been far too effective at ducking popular criticism of his role in history)

If humanity ever chooses to avoid creating yet-to-be-developed doomsday devices in humanity's future, while _still_ harvesting benefits of new R&D (viz. nuclear power plant energy), it needs to 'debug' the social epistemology around the Advisory Committee on Uranium / Uranium Committee (leading to S-1 under the NDRC).

edit: added 'in the short term, and decades of existential fear in the long term'

InTheArena4• 12 months ago

In any moral framework that does not include perfect knowledge of the future, the nuclear bomb is morally defensible at worst, and morally required at best. Sheer number of lives saved? The Nuclear Bomb ended the war. Number of Japanese lives saved? Nuclear bomb wins. The "non-violent" option of a blockade? It would have resulted in millions dead. The Japanese farming system completely collapsed in 1944. Many still starved even after the surrender, as the allies rushed to get food and aid to Japan.

What about a pure Soviet entry into the war? You have to look at what happened to Poland and Eastern Europe when the Soviet army invaded. Once again, by any metric, this was the best possible outcome at the time.

But it was unquestionably a local maximum - the best solution at the time, with horrific consequences afterward.

baud147258• 12 months ago

unnecessary blood on his hands

While the debate on the bomb is not and never will be settled, I'm not sure I'd call the bloodshed caused by Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be unnecessary: it ended up a war that had caused so far millions of death.

And what social epistemology, actually?

prmph5• 12 months ago

The bomb would have been developed one way or the other, no matter what. The time was ripe for it.

socalgal22• 12 months ago

Why is this special? The Japanese killed ~7 million Chinese, 0.5 to 1 million Filipinos, 500k in Korea, you can keep adding them up. Then Japan loses 0.2% of all their atrocities and it's the worst thing ever? No, it's not the worst thing ever, not even close. Sure, we'd all like it to never happen again. But if I had to pick one thing not happening again I'd pick saving all others that died in WW2 over this one incident.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKPFT-RioU

There's also the argument that it saved more lives than the deaths it caused. The same can not be said for Japan's atrocities.

Deanoumean• 12 months ago

The reason this is special is because no one else used a nuclear bomb, before this event or after. That's basically the definition of "special" and the number of Chinese that the Japanese killed has nothing to do with it.

Picking anything other than the nuclear bomb to never happen again is moronic because the planet can survive the other things, but if nukes were to start flying again, it would most likely not end with just two. Other countries have those weapons now too and such a war has the potential to be last one ever fought.

sidcool3• 12 months ago

Now do Iraq numbers and self reflect.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

The singular horror of this event really is so difficult to describe, definitely one of the low points of human history which we must vow to never again repeat, under any circumstances.

Lower than the Holodomor? Lower than Dresden or Tokyo fire bombings? Lower than the Holocaust? Lower than Unit 731?

emmelaich• 12 months ago

Indeed! I can add "lower than the butchery and sadism of the Japanese forces in SE Asia?"

Synaesthesia6• 12 months ago

It's the single worst moment in human history. Yes, those crimes were larger, but in terms of the worst instant of time, this has to take the cake.

bongodongobob• 12 months ago

Yeah I'm pretty sure Stalingrad was far, far worse.

yes_really6• 12 months ago

The fault of this event lies on Japan, not the US. Japan was the aggressor who started the war. Japan was "fighting to the end" and gave no indications it would surrender. It is estimated that the war would go on to 1947 had the bombs not been dropped. That would have caused the deaths of millions or tens oof million more people. It is a tragedy that people died, but the blame lies in Japan's actions, not the US'.

JohnKemeny• 12 months ago

"Look what you made me do!"

By the way: that same argument is used by Netanyahu and Putin today!

zzzbra• 12 months ago

I just bought this paperback.

jmclnx• 12 months ago

Verg good read

Linked there is also a related article from 1985

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/07/15/hiroshima-the-...

cypherpunks01• 12 months ago

"The work was originally published in The New Yorker, which had planned to run it over four issues but instead dedicated the entire edition of August 31, 1946, to a single article"

TO OUR READER: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use.

The Editors

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_(book)

defaultcompany• 12 months ago

This article was 160 pages long when printed in the New Yorker. Modern nuclear warheads are around 30x more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. For comparison sake the equivalent resulting story would be 4800 pages long.

karlgkk3• 12 months ago

The atrocities that the Japanese military committed, consistently and repeatedly and combined with their attack on pearl harbor, meant that Americans of the time on the front lines had few qualms or issues with dropping the bomb.

Truman famously called Oppenheimer a "cry baby" when Oppenheimer expressed doubt. Truman had spent the past decade dealing with the war in his capacity as senator and vice president - seeing the effects it was having first (or second) hand.

Now, this isn't to say that America was right or not right to drop one or both bombs. It may "feel" like I'm saying "the Japanese deserved it for their behavior" - that's not a belief I hold, either.

I just want to provide color for why American leadership seemed so relatively unconcerned with the lives of Japanese civilians in 1945.

vjvjvjvjghv2• 12 months ago

I agree. With the information they had at the time it made total sense to drop the bomb. After seeing how tough the Japanese military fought during the invasion of the various islands it was reasonable to assume that the invasion of the mainland would be extremely bloody.

I think whatever we learned (I have read that Japan was already ready to surrender). after should be applied to future wars but not be applied to situations where the information was not available.

If anybody is responsible for Japanese suffering it’s clearly Hirohito and his generals who were too cowardly to accept defeat and instead chose to have killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese while they were hesitating.

pchristensen• 12 months ago

My favorite terrifying fact about the WW2 Pacific theater: The US expected that invading the Japanese home islands would be so bloody that they manufactured tons of Purple Heart medals, and they’re still giving them out today because they haven’t run out.

ForOldHack7• 12 months ago

"Japan was ready to surrender." It was not. The military, was ready to fight to the last man,and that was the resistance that Hirohito had to over come. And why there were 4 cabinets that the Emperor had to go though. A thuough understanding about what was actually occuring would help you understand. Read Hirohito's book.

Hirohito surendered, and insisted on doing so, that he would spare the lives and culture of the japanese people, and TO SPARE LIVES IN GENERAL.

The generals went scorched earth and they plan would have killed 20~22 million japanese people, that is what it means to fight to the last man.

Clearly, you need to read Hirohito's book.

Hirohito surendered his divinity, and instead of his people calling him a coward, they continued to worship him, in a way very few non-japanese can understand. Two of my best friends in school were japanese, and when I got to Jr high, my counselor had the internment order on his wall. I hated that the US dropped the bomb for decades, until I read Hirohito's book. Then it mostly fell into place, and I had to check with a bunch of historians, and with the senior members of the peace organization. I belonged to for decades.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

I just want to provide color for why American leadership seemed so relatively unconcerned with the lives of Japanese civilians in 1945.

They were concerned about Japanese lives. They were more concerned about American lives, but they concluded the shorter the war was the more lives of everyone involved could be saved.

The Japanese food situation was also very dire: there was a very real risk of famine during Winter 1945-46, and so if the war could be ended before that many millions of Japanese civilians could be saved.

alexjplant2• 12 months ago

Now, this isn't to say that America was right or not right to drop one or both bombs. It may "feel" like I'm saying "the Japanese deserved it for their behavior" - that's not a belief I hold, either.

Some contemporaries of note didn't think it was justified either [1]. Eisenhower, a decorated war hero who later cautioned against the over-expansion of the military industrial complex in his Presidential farewell speech, said of the bombing in his memoir:

I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. [...] I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced [...] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives

I vacationed in Japan a few months ago via a tour group and we went to Hiroshima. It was one of the most emotionally-taxing experiences of my life. The bomb was literally dropped on a hospital [2]. The heat of the explosion melted the tops of headstones in a neighboring graveyard and seared some poor soul's shadow into the nearby steps that they were sitting on. Hundreds of thousands of civilians' lives were erased or permanently altered in a matter of seconds. Grabbing a sandwich from the 7-11 next door and eating it while I stared at where it all happened 80 years prior definitely fucked with me a bit.

I've never experienced war or lost somebody I care about to an enemy combatant. All things considered I've led a rather easy life. I can't say how I'd feel otherwise, but the me that exists right now thinks that our military shouldn't have done what it did. That they haven't done it again makes me wonder whether they realize this too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shima_Hospital

userbinator2• 12 months ago

but the me that exists right now thinks that our military shouldn't have done what it did.

It's worth remembering that if it weren't for them doing what they did, you might not have the life you do now.

opo4• 12 months ago

I find it is important to be skeptical of people's descriptions of what they were supposedly thinking years earlier. Much better is to find contemporaneous accounts. For example:

...my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary,

The last major battle before the dropping of the atomic bombs was the battle for Okinawa and it was the bloodiest and fiercest battle fought against the Japanese. Absolutely no one who knew about that battle would have claimed that Japan was already defeated.

...When the guns fell silent, more than 240,000 people had lost their lives in the campaign for Okinawa. The American loss rate was 35 percent of the force, totaling 49,151 casualties.
...So close to the home islands, most Japanese soldiers refused to surrender and fought to the death. Their fanaticism contributed to a dreadful toll. Some 110,000 Japanese and conscripted Okinawan defenders were killed in action.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/okinawa-costs...

yes_really6• 12 months ago

the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives

FYI it is estimated that the war would go on until 1947 if the bombs were not dropped. There would be millions of American lives lost in that case.

sidcool3• 12 months ago

I sometimes feel many Americans are relatively unconcerned about lives of foreign civilians. Still.

timuckun3• 12 months ago

The problem is that the Americans saw no difference between soldiers committing atrocities and old people and children living in a city (fight aged men were out fighting).

They were targeting old people and children because it was easier to kill them than the soldiers.

ForOldHack7• 12 months ago

The please explain why Kyoto was taken off the lists of targets?

wiseowise7• 12 months ago

Sorry they didn’t invent HIMARS and satellite precision strikes yet.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

If anyone thinks that dropping the bombs was unnecessary, I would recommend reading Barrett's 140 Days to Hiroshima: The Story of Japan's Last Chance to Avert Armageddon:

* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51089656-140-days-to-hir...

* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/about-us/notes-museum/140-...

It documents, using Japanese source material including interviews with the principals involved, the decision making process leading up to the eventual surrender.

What was most surprising to me was the reluctance of many members to surrender even after two bombs were dropped. The Emperor himself had to be called in multiple times (which was unprecedented) to ensure that the surrender was 'pushed' through. Even after the vote to surrender happened there were still machinations to overturn it: a reminder that there was a coup attempt to prevent the surrender from being broadcast:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

petermcneeley• 12 months ago

Under which conditions is nuking a city not a horrific warcrime?

defrost9• 12 months ago

Under which conditions is nuking a city any more or less a horrific warcrime than the destruction of city via HE and incendiary bombs?

Recall that 72 Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were destroyed prior to Hiroshima, which was on a target list to be destroyed whether by atomic or conventional means already.

https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2014/09/22/tokyo-hiroshima/

Outside of Japan many other cities received the same treatment, famously but not only Dresden.

nelox7• 12 months ago

Throwing around these terms without understanding, how and why they apply is foolhardy. The use of nuclear weapons is not explicitly prohibited under current international law, and is not automatically classified as a war crime per se. Their use could constitute a war crime depending on the circumstances, especially if they violate core principles of international humanitarian law (IHL).

ForOldHack7• 12 months ago

When the alternatives of nationalism are to fight to the very last man, and cause 8 times the number of casualties. ( Perhaps somewhat more...). Hirohito knew that the military was going to do that.

yard20102• 12 months ago

This is a fallacy, not that you're not right, but what is the alternative? The alternative is never "just do nothing and everyone lives"

Life isn't about choosing the best option but choosing the lesser evil imo

brabel2• 12 months ago

Never. They could have blockaded Japan. They could have negotiated with the Russians, as at the time they were “sharing” Germany and were more or less on the same side. They could even just go home, Japan was already no military threat after the horrific fire bombing. The fact that they chose to do the unthinkable, and that Americans defend that decision to this day, goes to show what kind of people they really are. They only seek peace and diplomacy when it’s other people’s wars.

snickerbockers7• 12 months ago

It definitely is a warcrime, but just about every major battle in WWII is a war-crime by modern standards. The concept of warcrimes exists largely because we don't ever want WWII to happen again. Before that there were geneva conventions which defined war crimes but they were far more limited to the extent that even the Nazis were able to come up with supposed justifications for much of what they did based around [according to them, at least] their having not violated the geneva conventions which existed at the time.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined weren't even the biggest war crimes committed by America against the Japanese. I'm avoiding mentioning war-crimes committed by the other side because I don't want to inadvertently make the fallacious argument that they would somehow justify the war crimes we committed, but the argument I do want to make is that these sorts of arguments should be based around who was killed.

Torture is an exception to this because it implies the deliberate infliction of more pain than is necessary to kill the victim, but these sorts of discussions should never be based around the choice of weapon. When I see people constantly criticize the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki at a far greater rate than similar-scale events such as the repeated firebombings of tokyo or even "normal" battles with massive collateral damage such as Okinawa or Berlin it seems to me that the implication is that you would've been fine with America killing 250k people as long as we had done so with conventional weapons.

dsego2• 12 months ago

It was total war (1), all civilian infrastructure was there to facilitate the war, all bets were off.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

Under which conditions is nuking a city not a horrific warcrime?

When the alternative was millions of Japanese dead instead of a few hundred thousand.

(Never mind American lives, or all of those living under Japanese rule in Manchuria, etc.)

ekianjo5• 12 months ago

The US had no other bomb ready to be dropped actually. preparing the fissile material took a lot of time.

JKCalhoun3• 12 months ago

Is that true? I thought they had a core at Los Alamos.

ForOldHack7• 12 months ago

I did not read that book, and I had venimently disagreed with it, until I read Hirohito's book. The military and the nationalists wanted to fight to the very last man, and cause as much death as possible. Estimates of that strategy were 22 million japanese dead 1.1M to 1.5M American deaths.

Hirohito fought through 4 cabinets, and finally was able to surrender. He did so simply for the lives of the japanese people. He said so. He saved American lives and he saved a huge amount of japanese lives. ( Keep in mind 'fight to the last man' )

Japan would not have surrendered if we had not dropped the bombs. The second one was essential.

I am anti-war and anti nuke, but there was no other solution.

My father knew Oppy, and I knew he knew, but because of what the US did to him, my father never spoke of him,but spoke of every other physisasist involved. I caught he saying Ed for Edwin Teller, but he would never admit to knowing Oppy. Those were dangerous times.

nelox7• 12 months ago

Yes, actually try and put yourself in the shoes of American leadership responsible for making the decision to continue with an invasion of Japan without using nuclear weapons. American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict. The U.S. had limited understanding of the full effects of nuclear weapons before using them. The Manhattan Project scientists estimated 70,000 to 100,000 deaths for a medium-sized Japanese city (depending on weather, geography, and building density). These were very rough estimates, focused mainly on blast and heat, not long-term radiation, which was unknowable.

slg11• 12 months ago

Why is this discussion always a binary choice between a land invasion of Japan or dropping the bombs exactly how we did? For example, there is rarely any discussion of whether another target with fewer civilian casualties could have accomplished the same result.

yard20102• 12 months ago

Where goes the line?

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

American casualty estimates exceeded 500,000, and Japanese fatalities were expected to be in the millions—with some projections placing them between 5 million and 10 million depending on the length and scope of the conflict.

Per Barrett, some Japan leadership said that as many as 20M Japanese (civilians) would die in a defence of an invasion (but also because of starvation and such), and the leadership was fine with that.

mbs1592• 12 months ago

Many of the top US generals at the time thought that the blockade and imminent Soviet invasion would have been enough to force the Japanese into surrender. The land invasion comparison was propped up as a good "justification" for dropping the bomb, though.

timuckun3• 12 months ago

AFIK they were looking for ways to surrender while saving face. They were using the Russians as the negotiators. The US didn't want that so they bombed instead.

throw0101c4• 12 months ago

AFIK they were looking for ways to surrender while saving face.

They were also looking to keep all the land they had conquered.

If Nazi Germany was willing to surrender would we have been okay with it if they got to keep the Czech Republic, Poland, northern France?

Synaesthesia6• 12 months ago

Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb".

Many US military experts and top generals believed it was unnecessary. Japan was defeated, particularly with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, it was over for them.

fch42• 12 months ago

fair enough to notice though that while the Soviet Union may have had agreed to enter the war with Japan (at the Potsdam conference ?), it had not done so by the time the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was dropped. It did declare war on Japan the day before the Nagasaki bombing. In a way ... Stalin chose the "let's go to war with Japan" date opportunistically. When it was clear there could be much gain without too much pain.

Which is not a dissimilar thing to the US "wavering" over the commitment to an invasion of Japan. The nuclear bombs "resolved" that. We'll never know what would have happened otherwise.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

Many US military experts and top generals believed it was unnecessary. Japan was defeated, particularly with the entry of the Soviet Union into the war, it was over for them.

Yes, Japan was defeated a year before the bombs were dropped. The problem was Japan decided not to surrender even though themselves they knew they lost.

That's the problem.

Japan not surrendering even when they knew.

Per Japanese documents even after one bomb was dropped they still would not surrender. It took the second bomb, and even then the war cabinet was split on 3-3 on whether to surrender.

Two bombs dropping only got them to the point of a tie. The Emperor had to be called in to break the tie after two bombings.

And the Japanese knew the Soviets were going to enter the war. That was already in their calculations and they still were for fighting.

throw0101c4• 12 months ago

Gar Alperovitz wrote the definitive book on the subject "The Decision to use the Atomic Bomb".

"definitive"? What does that even mean in a field of study like history? You're telling me there has been zero new analysis on the subject since 1995? No new insights?

And even that assumes that Alperovitz's initial premises were valid, that he did not miss any evidence,or exclude or discount any because his own biases and such, and so that is conclusions followed logically from all of that.

How is it "definitive"?

alex_young2• 12 months ago

Isn’t it clearly a horrific crime against humanity to knowingly, instantaneously, and with premeditation, murder hundreds of thousands of civilians?

The normal response to this line of reasoning is that they were / could have been doing the same to us. Two wrongs does not make a right does it?

yes_really6• 12 months ago

Japan was the one who started the war. Japan was the aggressor. Defending yourself by winning a war against an aggressor is not a "wrong".

Many more people were saved by dropping the bombs than people died in it. And, while it is a tragedy that those people died, that fault lies with Japan, not the US.

wiseowise7• 12 months ago

Of course it is, much more humane is to mount amphibious assault and kill millions.

Gibbon1• 12 months ago

My thoughts about this after 50 years of thinking about it is that war results in a relentless normalization of deviance. It's a good reason not to start wars.

Mordisquitos• 12 months ago

The firebombing of Tokyo[0] on 10 March 1945 is often considered even more destructive and lethal than either of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or at the very least in the same ballpark. However, popular discourse never treats it as a crime against humanity.

What is the qualitative difference between the killing 100,000 Japanese civilians in one morning using an atomic bomb and the killing 100,000 Japanese civilians in one night using explosive and incendiary devices?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_194...

flyinglizard2• 12 months ago

The notion of "crimes against humanity" is a very modern construct. The Japanese civilian society paid a price for its militaristic adventures. Armies don't operate in vacuum, they're an extension of their society.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

Isn’t it clearly a horrific crime against humanity to knowingly, instantaneously, and with premeditation, murder hundreds of thousands of civilians?

What does "civilian" mean when it comes to Imperial Japan?

* https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/there-are-no-...

The official Japanese plan to defend against a US landing was to have children attack the invading US soldiers:

* https://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=141048

* https://apjjf.org/mark-ealey/1689/article

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Operation_K...

cmsefton3• 12 months ago

I am one of those that think that the dropping of the bombs was unnecessary.

The decision is complicated and multifaceted. It's also difficult to know what could have happened if they hadn't done it. If my brother had been born a woman, he'd have been my sister.

To your point of some people refusing to surrender on the Japanese side, on the US side Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Admiral William Leahy opposed the dropping of the bombs, and viewed it as completely unnecessary. Does this then demonstrate it was not needed, because there were elements who did not support it?

The Japanese had no navy to speak of at the time, America had complete air superiority, and had no qualms of firebombing Japanese cities and killing its civilians. They were essentially already defeated. There were peace envoys from the Japanese side towards the end of 1944 onwards exploring a negotiated peace. Peace was already likely without the need of a ground invasion, if it had been explored seriously.

What seems likely is that dropping the bombs was an attempt to end the war on American terms, with no Soviet involvement in a negotiated peace. It likely had little to do with avoiding a ground operation; those plans were never approved, and it's unlikely they would have been needed.

I don't discount that people may really have believed and intended that this would save American lives. I do think there were other reasons behind dropping the bombs, however, things are rarely binary.

Edit: I should also add here that from the Japanese perspective (for example, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa), the invasion of the Soviets is considered to be the deciding factor in ending the war, and not the dropping of the bombs, so even the assertion that the bombs were responsible is questionable.

throwanem7• 12 months ago

I forget who exactly, but someone correctly said after Versailles that it was no armistice but a twenty-year ceasefire. What you advocate would have been another.

tristramb• 12 months ago

I agree with you in that decisions like this are always the outcome of multiple forces pushing different ways. But I would lean more to thinking it would have been very difficult for Trueman to have not ordered the use of the bombs.

It would have been electoral suicide because of the extra US casualties.

It would probably have led to the partition of Japan as well as Korea, leading to problems for the US in the post-war world. Although the Iron Curtain didn't descend till a few years later, by 1945, the USSR was already being very possessive about countries in Eastern Europe. Trueman was more aware of the dangers posed by the USSR that Roosevelt had been.

Just because a country had been defeated, it doesn't mean the government will surrender. Nazi Germany was effectively defeated with Bagration and the breakout from Normandy in 1944 but their government fought on to the bitter end. (In a way, the V1 and V2 missile programs did benefit Germany because they drained off resources which would otherwise have prolonged the war and allowed the use of the atom bomb on Berlin.)

And rushing to finish a war to minimise the influence of one party on the peace negotiations did have a precedent. It was what the French and British did at the end of WW1 to prevent the US from dominating the peace process. (But that didn't turn out very well.)

I think things like this would have been in Trueman's mind when he made the descision.

jgalt212• 12 months ago

Japanese had no navy to speak of at the time, America had complete air superiority, and had no qualms of firebombing Japanese cities and killing its civilians. They were essentially already defeated.

This roughly aligns with some of the island hopping campaign, but still the Japanese just wouldn't surrender. It was not on their culture to do so (at the time).

I'm not saying you're overall wrong, but saying I would not infer too much from your premise.

potato3732842• 12 months ago

It's also difficult to know what could have happened if they hadn't done it

This sort of emotional hand waving in the direction of uncertainty is always employed in these discussions. What is the path from the status quo of late summer 1945 to peace without atomic bombs and how much death and destruction are the high and low end estimates? The status quo is/was well documented at the time and has been scrutinized with a microscope from all sides with the benefit of hindsight since. You are going to have a hard time charting a path from the status quo to piece that causes less death and destruction than what actually happened without a case where a bunch of exceptional things happen in a row.

You might not like that "basically fire bombing but with extra science to make it cheaper" was employed to end the war because of the 2nd and 3rd order implications of this extra cheapness but it's nearly certain that it was the least bad way to end the war.

the invasion of the Soviets is considered to be the deciding factor in ending the war, and not the dropping of the bombs, so even the assertion that the bombs were responsible is questionable.

These sort of statements are always weasel worded so as to avoid comparing the relative size of the factors. They stood to have their entire country bombed into oblivion. The soviet invasion was simply the final straw on the same way someone who's lost everything may choose to go postal over a minor slight.

throw0101d21• 12 months ago

To your point of some people refusing to surrender on the Japanese side, on the US side Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Admiral William Leahy opposed the dropping of the bombs, and viewed it as completely unnecessary. Does this then demonstrate it was not needed, because there were elements who did not support it?

MacArthur wanted to invade. He wanted to invade with Olympic even though Kyūshū had been built-up extensively by the Japanese so that the initial plans having a 3:1 US troop advantage dropped to a 1:1 ratio:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Allied_re-e...

This was lunacy.

southernplaces73• 12 months ago

Much of what you state is basically true, but bear in mind that other options, that didn't involve nuclear terror, would still have worked, and weren't used for reasons a bit more cynical than exasperation at Japanese truculence, or mere ignorance of radiation's insidious effects (which wasn't as deep as one might think, even in 1945)..

Even without concretely knowing just how long the Japanese government would attempt to hold out in the face of conventionally inevitable defeat, political and military planners in the U.S. could have -and knew they could have- simply sealed off the Japanese Home Islands and starved them into submission while continuing to bomb their cities to ashes with ordinary bombs.

Well before July of 1945, Japan was essentially defenseless against aerial bombardment and its cities aside from the famous cases of Nagasaki and Hiroshima had already been absolutely devastated by repeat massive bomber raids that the feeble Japanese air defense systems at the time could do next to nothing against. Many, many more people had already died in these firestorm raids than were eventually killed by Little Boy and Fat Man.

What's more, the Japanese Navy was by that point basically in scattered, useless tatters while U.S. naval and aerial might was so total, so all-encompassing, that the severely import-dependent Japanese homeland could have been brought completely to its knees in misery, to the point of eventually just succumbing, without having to send so much as a single American soldier onto the the main islands.

It would have been a longer and less "glorious" way of leveraging a surrender than one big military invasion by all those shiny war tools and soldiers you now have geared up in such abundance to fight and finish the whole mess, but it indisputably would have worked; even nationalist fanaticism short circuits when literal mass starvation becomes completely inescapable, ravages every corner of society, and the most basic essentials of modern civilization are gone, while every single one of your cities is now ashes and rubble. All of these horrors could have been achieved without invasion.

The United States knew all this. However, as mentioned above, its Marine Corps and vast navy were already at maximum deployment, so the political sacrifice of a decisive invasion was the alternative to which the atomic bombs were compared. Secondly, the U.S leadership now had the bomb, after all that cost and effort, and felt a pressing need to showcase its live military use to themselves, to the world, and very crucially, to Stalin. By that point, in July and August, he was no longer quite the friendly "Uncle Joe" that American wartime propaganda had painted him as for the sake of political convenience, while the Nazis were still in the picture.

Personally, i'm glad the bombs were used then, in that context, while their destructive power was still s relatively weak. It showed the world the monstrosity of atomic bombing used against an actual society, while the consequences for using it live were much less than they would have been if delayed to just a decade later. If at that future date, someone had decided to finally get an itchy trigger finger for the first time, they'd have been doing it with many more, far more powerful bombs, claiming many more lives..

5423542342358• 12 months ago

the U.S. could have -and knew they could have- simply sealed off the Japanese Home Islands and starved them into submission while continuing to bomb their cities to ashes with ordinary bombs.

A blockade was estimated to kill multiple millions of Japanese. The reason to avoid this was not because it was less glorious, but because it was far more horrific for the Japanese.

Symmetry• 12 months ago

One important thing the US could have done to get the Japanese to surrender without dropping the bomb would have been to promise that Japan would not be turned into a republic after the war but allowed to keep its imperial family as ceremonial heads of state. As, you know, actually happened after they surrendered.

Promising to do what we actually did would have been more than enough to save a huge number of lives, and honestly we should have had Hirohito "go into seclusion" in favor of a successor.

5423542342358• 12 months ago

But you don't know that promising that wouldn't have emoldened the Japanese leadership. That they wouldn't have seen that as a weakening of Allied resolve and a willingness to end the war on Japan's terms. Japan was already using Iwo Jima and Okinawa to fight to the last man while exacting high American causalities, in an attempt to make the US reassess the cost of taking mainland Japan.

hulitu• 12 months ago

The Emperor himself had to be called in multiple times (which was unprecedented) to ensure that the surrender was 'pushed' through

Why didn't they drop the bomb in Tokio then ? This surely would have been more convincing for the emperor.

marssaxman2• 12 months ago

The Americans had already bombed Tokyo into ruins five months prior, killing at least 100,000 people and leaving a million homeless. It was the most violent air raid in history, doing more damage than either of the atomic bombings. The Japanese did not surrender.

The point of Hiroshima was not that the USAF could destroy a city, because they had already done that sixty-seven times over the preceding year, but that they could now do it with a single plane and a single bomb. They specifically selected a city which had never been raided before so it would be clear that all the damage had been done by the new weapon.

The Japanese were used to watching hundreds of American bombers destroy a city overnight. Now they had to fear a raid in which hundreds of bombers destroyed hundreds of cities overnight, and then the war would be over because their society would no longer exist.

impact_sy• 12 months ago

Honestly, I think the Japanese deserved it. If you see the war crimes committed by the Japanese in World War II, you will know that the atomic bomb was right.

pwim• 12 months ago

Saying that the Japanese people deserved it comes off as hateful. Not every Japanese person was complicit. Like I think it was pretty clear Japanese children were innocent casualties.

JKCalhoun3• 12 months ago

Civilians though?

dsego2• 12 months ago

It's a tough question, it was total war, all the civilians were working to support the military goals. Japanese supposedly had a very militarized society (1). The concept of total war adopted by the expansionist axis powers meant that the allies had to fight back in the same way, namely use strategic bombing (2) to lower their morale and destroy civilian infrastructure and industrial targets which aided the war effort.

(1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_militarism

(2)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World...

nelox7• 12 months ago

By standards of the day, absolutely. Today, probably not.

From the military and strategic standpoint of 1945, using nuclear weapons to rapidly end the war was considered justified, necessary, and effective, especially given the precedent of widespread strategic bombing and the anticipated cost of a full-scale invasion.

While moral dissent existed, it was overridden by the dominant goal of ending the war quickly and decisively. A goal that, in the minds of U.S. leaders, justified the use of overwhelming force.

sidcool3• 12 months ago

The European theatre of war has long shadowed the brutality and loss of the Pacific theatre. And even the Eastern front.

From what I have read, relatively speaking, the Western European front was easier than the Eastern one and the Pacific theatre.

JKCalhoun3• 12 months ago

This came up recently on my feed (Hiroshima - the unknown images): https://youtu.be/QrqjADwzDm0

Warning: although much of the graphic medical condition of the victims of the blast are blurred out, it is still a very sad look at the effects of this weapon.

They choose photos from shortly after the bomb is detonated of some of the victims. They then use interviews and … photogrammetry? … to explain some of the effects on the unfortunate people.

wouterjanl2• 12 months ago

Here’s an extraordinary piece that focuses on the stories of the ordinary lives of the real people surviving 64 kilo enriched uranium exploding above their head yielding a blast of approximately 15 kiloton TNT which caused a fireball with a diameter of 370m that had the same surface temperature as the sun (source: Wikipedia). And here we are, the intellectually curious people of the internet, above all interested in offsetting these tragedies to some other suffering statistics. Why can’t we help but look away from human suffering inflicted by war, even if there’s a moving long read focusing on real people presented to us? And who does this thinking serve?

Towards the end of the piece, the author describes a science professor who, together with his son, lays buried under the rubble of his house after the blast. He ultimately survives but reflects about laying there, thinking: “It was my first time I ever tasted such a beautiful spirit when I decided to die for our Emperor.” How fascinating this is the spin you give to such a traumatising experience. Are we really nation state citizens first, human beings second? Could speaking about the fate of the people of Hiroshima in terms as ‘necessity’ and ‘justified’ be a symptom of the same thinking? How do we get out of this?

5423542342358• 12 months ago

Would you let someone beat you to death? Would you let them beat your children to death? If you shot them or stabbed them or hit them in the back of the head with a shovel, would you say it was ‘necessity’ and ‘justified’ or would that be a symptom of the 'same thinking'? War is terrible, but it is pretty naive to lament Hiroshima as if it existed in isolation, and not in the context of an aggressive imperialist Japan epitomized in the rape of Nanking. While these things need to be explored and looked at, we also need to recognize that death camps and genocide were happening every day the Nazis and Japanese empire were still fighting.

wouterjanl2• 12 months ago

I do not think Hiroshima existed in isolation. I totally agree that the Japanese empire and the Third Reich committed horrible war crimes in WW2. If there's anything I lament, it's how it seems so hard to feel empathy for the traumas of the real people who die in war, whatever side they are on. The New Yorker piece we are commenting on describes mundane lives of normal people. These were not people who were beating someone or someone's children to death. Sure, many if not all Japanese were supporting a regime that was responsible for immense crulety, and sure, I do understand how that affects our ability to feel empathy for them (it's maybe similar to how I feel less empathy for a fan of a rival football team mourning a game's loss compared to a fan of the football team I happen to support). I understand this way of thinking, but I choose to rebel against it. Because we talk about losing real lives, real suffering - and what citizenship of which empire or nation state should be so crucial that it cancels out a person's humanity? As you write yourself, "war is terrible". It really is. Call me naive, but I dream of a world where that sentence is not followed by a 'but', but by a period.

timuckun3• 12 months ago

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died.

People will say the same thing about Gaza one day.

albulab3• 12 months ago

Then they will remember that October 7 was recorded by Hamas rapists.

Pooge• 12 months ago

I want to give my thoughts to answer a few comments in this thread. If the atomic bomb was first developed by the Japanese, they wouldn't have hesitated to use it just like the USA did. Does it make it more right? Absolutely not, but as a Japanese friend put it: "it's war".

If the war went on, Operation Cherry Blossom would have gone underway and we would probably still be dealing with bubonic plague decades later.

And, as other pointed out, if a land invasion occured, millions more would have died. The atomic bombs weren't even the deadliest events of the war—see the firebombing of Tokyo.

thomasfl• 12 months ago

Many comments here defend the decision to bomb Hiroshima. Atomic bombs today are 80 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I find it difficult to defend a decision to drop an atomic bomb that powerful on a city of millions of inhabitants. No matter what war crimes have been committed.

defrost9• 12 months ago

The decision to bomb Hiroshima was made long before the existence of atomic weapons was widely known. They were classified at the highest level and not even Truman knew they existed until he became POTUS after being VP.

Hiroshima was another target, way down the list, of Japanese targets to destroy, beginning with Tokyo, after Allied command determined that simply bombing purely industrial and military targets wasn't enough.

The decision to use an atomic weapon wasn't much debated, at the time, given they were built to counter a supposed German atomic capability that didn't exist and given that Germany had surrendered by the time the atomic weapons were ready for use.

With a massive amount of money invested, German targets being off the board, and Japan nearing it's end it was considered a dwindling window to field test the post Trinity prototypes in anger.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki was chosen as near virgin targets from the existing list of cities scheduled for destruction.

Seventy two Japanese cities were destroyed before they were.

luckys2• 12 months ago

I find it fascinatig the Little Boy (uranium) technology hadn't been fully tested by the Americans before the bombings.

dzonga• 12 months ago

Would the atom bomb have been used on Germany ?

Japan was giving up, but it wasn't a white majority population country. Hence the atom bomb was used to show the soviets America's new toy. & after that the world changed.

the bombs should have never been developed or even dropped.

clarionbell• 12 months ago

Yes and Japan was not giving up.

Bombs should have been developed and must have been dropped.

cdavid• 12 months ago

It is very likely: the atomic bomb was initially built to defeat Nazi Germany, and the Manhattan program was started before Pearl Harbour. When you read The Atomic Bomb book, many scientists who worked on the bomb justified their effort by defeating the Nazis, and many had to escape from Europe.

Once it became clear Nazi were about to be defeated, there were discussions from the scientists about sharing the knowledge w/ all countries. But at that point, the scientists had long lost control over the project.

notorandit• 12 months ago

I will likely be downvoted.

Anyway, Americans needed to show off their newly acquired nuclear capabilities. Not to Germans or to Japanese. And not to Italians. It was needed to demonstrate their superiority to Soviet Union without bombing the Soviet Union.

As someone else's here already posted out, military heads made it clear that bombing Japan was not needed for their surrender.

None else had gone that far with nuclear energy and bombs. Likely.

IMHO it was needed for something else much more political.

nabeards• 12 months ago

This is specifically called out as a reason in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I was there just a few weeks ago. It's also available here:

https://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/exhibition/index.php?action=Cor...

"The United States believed that ending the war with an atomic bombing would help prevent the Soviet Union from extending its sphere of influence."

Havoc• 12 months ago

It’s pretty wild how small the numbers are relatively speaking to the significance we ascribe to the event. Under half a million. Compare that to the recent USAID changes (10m+ expected) - which barely stayed in news cycle for a week.

bell-cot• 12 months ago

For those unfamiliar with the Soviet Union's Aug'45 entry into the war against Japan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet%E2%80%93Japanese_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria

Japan had ample reason to fear the Red Army. Which, in overrunning Manchuria and surrounding areas, had just proven Japan's assessments of Stalin's resources and capabilities to be disastrously wrong.

So, from the Japanese PoV - if they didn't surrender, how many weeks would it take for the Red Army to conquer the Japanese home islands? They were under no delusions about the brutality of a Soviet occupation.

forinti• 12 months ago

I get that people have this fascination for what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but was it really worse than the incendiary bombing of other cities?

These were all horrific events only meant to harm civilians. The whole bombing campaign was and I feel that focusing on these two cities makes us underestimate the dimension of the tragedy.

pfdietz• 12 months ago

Example: the firebombing of Toyama on Aug 1, 1945. 99.5% of the city was destroyed, a record perhaps unequaled in the history of warfare (vs. about 1/3rd of Nagasaki).

And the conventional bombing of Japan was just getting started. It would have escalated massively had Japan not surrendered.

aredox• 12 months ago

I recommend again and again Alex Wellerstein's blog on all those topics: https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com

sgnelson• 12 months ago

There's a lot of argument about whether or not the bomb should have been dropped, and that debate will go on forever.

And while the following is not as important as the decision to drop the bomb, I think the decisions to publish "Hiroshima" and how it was published (especially in 1946) is very much worth understanding. This was not a story the US Government did not want to get out.

The US military/government tried to hide many of the facts about what happened at Hiroshima/Nagasaki for various reasons (military secrecy was one, but I think hiding the true impacts of the horrors of the bomb from the American (and world) public was the big one.)

You can read about the coverup of the nuclear weapons impact on Hiroshima in the book "Fallout" by Lesley Blune: https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/fallou...

And here's a short article that I quickly googled that discusses the story behind the story using "Fallout" as a reference: https://insidestory.org.au/the-making-of-john-herseys-hirosh...

luckys2• 12 months ago

I believe we humans have reached a point where, materially at least, everyone could live in reasonable comfort and there would be no space for wars. Yet we seem to often behave as if we're still hunting for sustenance and living in caves, having to carve out our survival.

I don't have any inclination toward socialism or communism, nor do I have an answer for how this system we live in can be changed for the better, but if we don't at least consider that there must be alternatives, we'll keep living in a world where something as absurd as war continues to be considered normal.

Isamu• 12 months ago

Part of the problem understanding this is how much the leadership of Japan was strongly split into factions with opposite goals and views.

There was no unified decision to start the war. Instead the army unilaterally precipitated the war.

There was a lack of unified views about ending the war. To say that the war was already lost was true and recognized by many, but there was a strong faction that would not support surrender.

It’s hard to prove a counterfactual, whether not dropping the bomb would result in fewer deaths or more.

msarrel• 12 months ago

I especially like the idea that the USA would never have dropped the bomb in Europe but couldn't wait to try it out on the "yellow devils". Fun stuff to read speeches given in Congress about the "war-like Japanese".

I'm in no way criticizing the use of the bomb, I'm just suggesting we understand some of the many reasons why it was used.

Hiroshima (1946)

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