# Rosenberg's son admits dad's treason



## billc (Apr 8, 2011)

While he can't bring himself to admit his mother, as well as his father was a traitor, the son of Juluis and Ethel Rosenberg finally admits his father was a traitor. The article is at pajamasmedia.com.

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2...nbergs-youngest-son-robert-what-does-it-mean/

From the article:

First, as John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev have revealed in _Spies_, Ethel Rosenberg was not only aware of the network her husband had put in place, she herself suggested that her brother David Greenglass be recruited by the KGB since he was stationed at Los Alamos. Second, and most importantly, Julius Rosenberg was not only aware of the Manhattan Project, he recruited a second atom spy, Russell McNutt, precisely because he thought that McNutt would be able to gather atomic bomb information from the plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.


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## granfire (Apr 8, 2011)

oh em gee....

I don't believe there is a huge disagreement over that. 

However, the interesting point is that they were woefully unimportant, several other spies with more indepth knowledge outshone them in the information exchange, and they were unfairly railroaded. 

And the motivation for most of the big spies was the moral compass that no single nation should hold the monopoly over such a terrible things as the Atom Bomb.

And while the cold war was not particular pleasant, an atomic winter would have been much more cumbersom.


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## Big Don (Apr 8, 2011)

granfire said:


> And the motivation for most of the big spies was the moral compass that no single nation should hold the monopoly over such a terrible things as the Atom Bomb.


So that makes TREASON OK?
There are four main reasons people commit treason: Money, Ideology, Conscience and Ego. 
I think 90% come down to Ego, "Oh, those idiots will NEVER catch me..."


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## granfire (Apr 8, 2011)

Big Don said:


> So that makes TREASON OK?
> There are four main reasons people commit treason: Money, Ideology, Conscience and Ego.
> I think 90% come down to Ego, "Oh, those idiots will NEVER catch me..."




Be glad there are scientists with a conscience...enough egg heads out there who lack the greater understanding of humanity. Or humility.

However I do not dare speculate on the motivation of every single person who gave up secret material important to the making of the Atomic bomb.

Look back on history and be glad that only 2 were used in earnest. The world could look much different now, and God only knows if that could be a good thing.

There are enough people out there who think the 'nuke them' is a feasable response to the problems of the world. Consider the scenario id such could be done without the fear of like retaliation!


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## Bruno@MT (Apr 9, 2011)

There are several things here which

1) I think they were ideologists who thought the nuclear bomb should not belong to 1 nation. In that regard, they were right.
2) They were still traitors. Though I thought the death penalty was only applicable in wartime?
3) They did not make much of a difference, ironically.
4) I think they were thrown under the bus as a distraction attempt.
5) Many exceptionally bright people suck at judging things outside of their field of expertise. The fact that they did not expect to get caught is testament to that, in the same way that Hans Reiser thought he would get away with murdering his wife.

Personally I think the cold war was the best thing to ever happen. Given how we as a race suck at living peacefully together for humanitarian reasons, we were forced to not destroy each other because that game would have left no winners. If I had had the chance to work on nuclear weapons, I'd have taken it. I considered majoring in nuclear physics, but my country does not develop or have nukes, and the nuclear industry was already looking shaky. Had I lived in a nuke nation I would have tried to become a nuke scientist.


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## billc (Apr 9, 2011)

Giving the most dangerous weapons on the planet to one of the greatest mass murdering nations on the planet was insane.  If they had given the weapon info. to Britain or one of the western democracies, the idea of not wanting just one country to have those weapons is a little closer to being okay, but to the Soviet Union?  That would be like saying that the neighbor down the street, owns a gun, so I am going to give a gun to the serial killer down the street.


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## granfire (Apr 9, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Giving the most dangerous weapons on the planet to one of the greatest mass murdering nations on the planet was insane.  If they had given the weapon info. to Britain or one of the western democracies, the idea of not wanting just one country to have those weapons is a little closer to being okay, but to the Soviet Union?  That would be like saying that the neighbor down the street, owns a gun, so I am going to give a gun to the serial killer down the street.




Somebody tell billi about the trail of tears....no nation is above reproach.


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## Bruno@MT (Apr 9, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Giving the most dangerous weapons on the planet to one of the greatest mass murdering nations on the planet was insane.  If they had given the weapon info. to Britain or one of the western democracies, the idea of not wanting just one country to have those weapons is a little closer to being okay, but to the Soviet Union?  That would be like saying that the neighbor down the street, owns a gun, so I am going to give a gun to the serial killer down the street.



Perhaps, but 2 allies sharing the weapon would not protect people from other side.
The only way for the stalemate to exist is if all major parties have the bomb. And whether they are murderous or not, you must not forget that they still could not use them without getting vaporized themselves. After all, they didn't, did they? That is the beauty of nukes. Noone can fire the first shot and expect to live.

Had only the US and their direct allies had the bomb, it is likely they would have ganged up on russia and china in order to get global dominance. I mean, looking at what the US did from the 50s to the 80s, you can't really say that they hesitate to cause mayhem just to further their goals. I think it is a good thing they (and the alliance) didn't have a monopoly on nukes.

All superpowers need someone as a counterweight.


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## billc (Apr 9, 2011)

Yes, I'll say it.  I guess one could say that you should make sure street gangs are all well armed as well?


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## Blade96 (Apr 9, 2011)

billcihak said:


> one of the greatest mass murdering nations on the planet was insane.  If they had given the weapon info. to Britain or one of the western democracies, the idea of not wanting just one country to have those weapons is a little closer to being okay, but to the Soviet Union?  That would be like saying that the neighbor down the street, owns a gun, so I am going to give a gun to the serial killer down the street.



George F Kennan once thought the same thing. That the USSR was like Hitler and couldnt be trusted.

He retracted his beliefs as an old man and said that the Korean war, Vietnam war, all of it - could have been avoided. 

guess who was the only nation to ever use the atomic bomb?  it wasnt the ussr.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan


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## billc (Apr 9, 2011)

Dropped it to save lives, especially civillian lives, to avoid the nightmare of a beach landing in Japan.  Japanese military types have stated, had they had the bomb, it would have been constantly used.


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## granfire (Apr 9, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Dropped it to save lives, especially civillian lives, to avoid the nightmare of a beach landing in Japan.  Japanese military types have stated, had they had the bomb, it would have been constantly used.



The first one was a tough decision, the 2nd came easier yet...care to venture down that road?


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## MA-Caver (Apr 9, 2011)

To me... this is just closing the barn door.


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Dropped it to save lives, especially civillian lives, to avoid the nightmare of a beach landing in Japan. Japanese military types have stated, had they had the bomb, it would have been constantly used.


 
If you look closely at the history, odds are good that Japan would have surrendered before we had to invade-this was not known to all, and kept from some who made policy.


More to the point, having spoken directly with some of the people involved at the time who were still alive 15 years ago, and seen some of the correspondence involved, I can state-_strictly as my own, *well-informed* opinion_-that we dropped the bombs on Japan for one principle, over-riding reason:

_Because we *could*._



> in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
> 
> During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him 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. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'*. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..." - Dwight Eisenhower, _Mandate For Change_, pg. 380


 


> the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
> - _Ike on Ike_, Newsweek, 11/11/63


 


> It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
> 
> "The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
> - William Leahy, _I Was There_, pg. 441.


 


> MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary." William Manchester, _American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964_, pg. 512.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Well Elder, the internet is a great tool, an article from the weekly standard about the released intelligence reports on Japan and the end of world war 2 which supports Truman's decision to drop the bombs, and countering the "japan was ready to surrender anyway," argument.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp?page=2

from the article:

The diplomatic intercepts included, for example, those of neutral diplomats or attachés stationed in Japan. Critics highlighted a few nuggets from this trove in the 1978 releases, but with the complete release, we learned that there were only 3 or 4 messages suggesting the possibility of a compromise peace, while no fewer than 13 affirmed that Japan fully intended to fight to the bitter end. Another page in the critics' canon emphasized a squad of Japanese diplomats in Europe, from Sweden to the Vatican, who attempted to become peace entrepreneurs in their contacts with American officials. As the editors of the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary correctly made clear to American policymakers during the war, however, not a single one of these men (save one we will address shortly) possessed actual authority to act for the Japanese government...

An inner cabinet in Tokyo authorized Japan's only officially sanctioned diplomatic initiative. The Japanese dubbed this inner cabinet the Big Six because it comprised just six men: Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Army Minister Korechika Anami, Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai, and the chiefs of staff of the Imperial Army (General Yoshijiro Umezu) and Imperial Navy (Admiral Soemu Toyoda). In complete secrecy, the Big Six agreed on an approach to the Soviet Union in June 1945. This was not to ask the Soviets to deliver a "We surrender" note; rather, it aimed to enlist the Soviets as mediators to negotiate an end to the war satisfactory to the Big Six--in other words, a peace on terms satisfactory to the dominant militarists. Their minimal goal was not confined to guaranteed retention of the Imperial Institution; they also insisted on preservation of the old militaristic order in Japan, the one in which they ruled...

The conduit for this initiative was Japan's ambassador in Moscow, Naotake Sato. He communicated with Foreign Minister Togo--and, thanks to code breaking, with American policymakers. Ambassador Sato emerges in the intercepts as a devastating cross-examiner ruthlessly unmasking for history the feebleness of the whole enterprise. Sato immediately told Togo that the Soviets would never bestir themselves on behalf of Japan. The foreign minister could only insist that Sato follow his instructions. Sato demanded to know whether the government and the military supported the overture and what its legal basis was--after all, the official Japanese position, adopted in an Imperial Conference in June 1945 with the emperor's sanction, was a fight to the finish. The ambassador also demanded that Japan state concrete terms to end the war, otherwise the effort could not be taken seriously. Togo responded evasively that the "directing powers" and the government had authorized the effort--he did not and could not claim that the military in general supported it or that the fight-to-the-end policy had been replaced. Indeed, Togo added: "Please bear particularly in mind, however, that we are not seeking the Russians' mediation for anything like an unconditional surrender."

This last comment triggered a fateful exchange. Critics have pointed out correctly that both Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew (the former U.S. ambassador to Japan and the leading expert on that nation within the government) and Secretary of War Henry Stimson advised Truman that a guarantee that the Imperial Institution would not be eliminated could prove essential to obtaining Japan's surrender. The critics further have argued that if only the United States had made such a guarantee, Japan would have surrendered. But when Foreign Minister Togo informed Ambassador Sato that Japan was not looking for anything like unconditional surrender, Sato promptly wired back a cable that the editors of the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary made clear to American policymakers "advocate unconditional surrender provided the Imperial House is preserved." Togo's reply, quoted in the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary of July 22, 1945, was adamant: American policymakers could read for themselves Togo's rejection of Sato's proposal--with not even a hint that a guarantee of the Imperial House would be a step in the right direction. Any rational person following this exchange would conclude that modifying the demand for unconditional surrender to include a promise to preserve the Imperial House would not secure Japan's surrender.

Togo's initial messages--indicating that the emperor himself endorsed the effort to secure Soviet mediation and was prepared to send his own special envoy--elicited immediate attention from the editors of the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary, as well as Under Secretary of State Grew. Because of Grew's documented advice to Truman on the importance of the Imperial Institution, critics feature him in the role of the sage counsel. What the intercept evidence discloses is that Grew reviewed the Japanese effort and concurred with the U.S. Army's chief of intelligence, Major General Clayton Bissell, that the effort most likely represented a ploy to play on American war weariness. They deemed the possibility that it manifested a serious effort by the emperor to end the war "remote." Lest there be any doubt about Grew's mindset, as late as August 7, the day after Hiroshima, Grew drafted a memorandum with an oblique reference to radio intelligence again affirming his view that Tokyo still was not close to peace....

Starting with the publication of excerpts from the diaries of James Forrestal in 1951, the contents of a few of the diplomatic intercepts were revealed, and for decades the critics focused on these. But the release of the complete (unredacted) "Magic" Far East Summary, supplementing the Diplomatic Summary, in the 1990s revealed that the diplomatic messages amounted to a mere trickle by comparison with the torrent of military intercepts. The intercepts of Japanese Imperial Army and Navy messages disclosed without exception that Japan's armed forces were determined to fight a final Armageddon battle in the homeland against an Allied invasion. The Japanese called this strategy Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive). It was founded on the premise that American morale was brittle and could be shattered by heavy losses in the initial invasion. American politicians would then gladly negotiate an end to the war far more generous than unconditional surrender.
Ultra was even more alarming in what it revealed about Japanese knowledge of American military plans. Intercepts demonstrated that the Japanese had correctly anticipated precisely where U.S. forces intended to land on Southern Kyushu in November 1945 (Operation Olympic). American planning for the Kyushu assault reflected adherence to the military rule of thumb that the attacker should outnumber the defender at least three to one to assure success at a reasonable cost. American estimates projected that on the date of the landings, the Japanese would have only three of their six field divisions on all of Kyushu in the southern target area where nine American divisions would push ashore. The estimates allowed that the Japanese would possess just 2,500 to 3,000 planes total throughout Japan to face Olympic. American aerial strength would be over four times greater.

From mid-July onwards, Ultra intercepts exposed a huge military buildup on Kyushu. Japanese ground forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of four. Instead of 3 Japanese field divisions deployed in southern Kyushu to meet the 9 U.S. divisions, there were 10 Imperial Army divisions plus additional brigades. Japanese air forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of two to four. Instead of 2,500 to 3,000 Japanese aircraft, estimates varied between about 6,000 and 10,000. One intelligence officer commented that the Japanese defenses threatened "to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory."

Concurrent with the publication of the radio intelligence material, additional papers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been released in the last decade. From these, it is clear that there was no true consensus among the Joint Chiefs of Staff about an invasion of Japan. The Army, led by General George C. Marshall, believed that the critical factor in achieving American war aims was time. Thus, Marshall and the Army advocated an invasion of the Home Islands as the fastest way to end the war. But the long-held Navy view was that the critical factor in achieving American war aims was casualties. The Navy was convinced that an invasion would be far too costly to sustain the support of the American people, and hence believed that blockade and bombardment were the sound course.


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Well Elder, the internet is a great tool, an article from the weekly standard about the released intelligence reports on Japan and the end of world war 2 which supports Truman's decision to drop the bombs, and countering the "japan was ready to surrender anyway," argument.
> 
> http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp?page=2
> 
> ...


 
Japan's Navy was destroyed. They had no airforce. They had been defeated at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The sticking point was the Potsdam Declaration's-and the Allies's-insistence on _unconditional surrender,_ which, to the Japanese, meant the loss of the Emperor, and it was for this that many-especially the dominant militarists-were sticking for. As it was, even after dropping the bombs, what we got was a _conditional_ surrender, with retention of the Emperor. 

*It was not necessary to drop the bomb,* I'll take the word of a good old conservative icon, and general, like Ike over anyone else on this.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

continuing:

The picture becomes even more complex than previously understood because it emerged that the Navy chose to postpone a final showdown over these two strategies. The commander in chief of the U.S. fleet, Admiral Ernest King, informed his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April 1945 that he did not agree that Japan should be invaded. He concurred only that the Joint Chiefs must issue an invasion order immediately to create that option for the fall. But King predicted that the Joint Chiefs would revisit the issue of whether an invasion was wise in August or September. Meanwhile, two months of horrendous fighting ashore on Okinawa under skies filled with kamikazes convinced the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, that he should withdraw his prior support for at least the invasion of Kyushu. Nimitz informed King of this change in his views in strict confidence.
In August, the Ultra revelations propelled the Army and Navy towards a showdown over the invasion. On August 7 (the day after Hiroshima, which no one expected to prompt a quick surrender), General Marshall reacted to weeks of gathering gloom in the Ultra evidence by asking General Douglas MacArthur, who was to command what promised to be the greatest invasion in history, whether invading Kyushu in November as planned still looked sensible. MacArthur replied, amazingly, that he did not believe the radio intelligence! He vehemently urged the invasion should go forward as planned. (This, incidentally, demolishes later claims that MacArthur thought the Japanese were about to surrender at the time of Hiroshima.)
On August 9 (the day the second bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki), King gathered the two messages in the exchange between Marshall and MacArthur and sent them to Nimitz. King told Nimitz to provide his views on the viability of invading Kyushu, with a copy to MacArthur. Clearly, nothing that had transpired since May would have altered Nimitz's view that Olympic was unwise. Ultra now made the invasion appear foolhardy to everyone but MacArthur. But King had not placed a deadline on Nimitz's response, and the Japanese surrender on August 15 allowed Nimitz to avoid starting what was certain to be one of the most tumultuous interservice battles of the whole war.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Highlights from the article:

Meanwhile, two months of horrendous fighting ashore on Okinawa under skies filled with kamikazes convinced the commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester Nimitz, that he should withdraw his prior support for at least the invasion of Kyushu. Nimitz informed King of this change in his views in strict confidence.

and about McCarther:

. On August 7 (the day after Hiroshima, which no one expected to prompt a quick surrender), General Marshall reacted to weeks of gathering gloom in the Ultra evidence by asking General Douglas MacArthur, who was to command what promised to be the greatest invasion in history, whether invading Kyushu in November as planned still looked sensible. MacArthur replied, amazingly, that he did not believe the radio intelligence! He vehemently urged the invasion should go forward as planned. (This, incidentally, demolishes later claims that MacArthur thought the Japanese were about to surrender at the time of Hiroshima.)

also:

What this evidence illuminates is that one central tenet of the traditionalist view is wrong--but with a twist. Even with the full ration of caution that any historian should apply anytime he ventures comments on paths history did not take, in this instance it is now clear that the long-held belief that Operation Olympic loomed as a certainty is mistaken. Truman's reluctant endorsement of the Olympic invasion at a meeting in June 1945 was based in key part on the fact that the Joint Chiefs had presented it as their unanimous recommendation. (King went along with Marshall at the meeting, presumably because he deemed it premature to wage a showdown fight. He did comment to Truman that, of course, any invasion authorized then could be canceled later.) With the Navy's withdrawal of support, the terrible casualties in Okinawa, and the appalling radio-intelligence picture of the Japanese buildup on Kyushu, Olympic was not going forward as planned and authorized--period. But this evidence also shows that the demise of Olympic came not because it was deemed unnecessary, but because it had become unthinkable. It is hard to imagine anyone who could have been president at the time (a spectrum that includes FDR, Henry Wallace, William O. Douglas, Harry Truman, and Thomas Dewey) failing to authorize use of the atomic bombs in this circumstance.
Japanese historians uncovered another key element of the story. After Hiroshima (August 6), Soviet entry into the war against Japan (August 8), and Nagasaki (August 9), the emperor intervened to break a deadlock within the government and decide that Japan must surrender in the early hours of August 10. The Japanese Foreign Ministry dispatched a message to the United States that day stating that Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration, "with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler." This was not, as critics later asserted, merely a humble request that the emperor retain a modest figurehead role. As Japanese historians writing decades after the war emphasized, the demand that there be no compromise of the "prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler" as a precondition for the surrender was a demand that the United States grant the emperor veto power over occupation reforms and continue the rule of the old order in Japan. Fortunately, Japan specialists in the State Department immediately realized the actual purpose of this language and briefed Secretary of State James Byrnes, who insisted properly that this maneuver must be defeated. The maneuver further underscores the fact that right to the very end, the Japanese pursued twin goals: not only the preservation of the imperial system, but also preservation of the old order in Japan that had launched a war of aggression that killed 17 million.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

From the article above:  another reason to drop the bombs

This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Finally, the arguments against dropping the bombs and why they were wrong:

From the article:

 With the Navy's withdrawal of support, the terrible casualties in Okinawa, and the appalling radio-intelligence picture of the Japanese buildup on Kyushu, Olympic was not going forward as planned and authorized--period. But this evidence also shows that the demise of Olympic came not because it was deemed unnecessary, but because it had become unthinkable. It is hard to imagine anyone who could have been president at the time (a spectrum that includes FDR, Henry Wallace, William O. Douglas, Harry Truman, and Thomas Dewey) failing to authorize use of the atomic bombs in this circumstance.


There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

billcihak said:


> . On August 7 (the day after Hiroshima, which no one expected to prompt a quick surrender), General Marshall reacted to weeks of gathering gloom in the Ultra evidence by asking General Douglas MacArthur, who was to command what promised to be the greatest invasion in history, whether invading Kyushu in November as planned still looked sensible. MacArthur replied, amazingly, that he did not believe the radio intelligence! He vehemently urged the invasion should go forward as planned. (This, incidentally, demolishes later claims that MacArthur thought the Japanese were about to surrender at the time of Hiroshima.)


 



> : "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' *MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it.* Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. *Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary." *
> William Manchester, _American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964_, pg. 512.
> 
> Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "*MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed."* He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? *He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." *
> Norman Cousins, _The Pathology of Power_, pg. 65, 70-71.


 
We could have firebombed them for a few more weeks, as we did Tokyo, while negotiating. We dropped the bomb because *we could*-we justified it with fears and misgivings, and not knowing what the Japanese actually intended, though they clearly were intent upon surrender at that point.  As your own article points out, they were attempting to back-channel a surrender that was less onerous than the unconditional one that we were insisting upon. We had a new toy, and we wanted to use it-while there were a variety of other "reasons" for doing so, this was truly the prime driver behind its use, that will to power.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

the article clearly debunks your take elder. The new understanding of the civillian deaths that were occurring while the war continued the belief that the invasion was going to be a disaster, it is in the article for anyone who wants a clearer picture of the actual intelligence going on at the presidential level before dropping the bombs.

From the article:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp?page=1

On August 9 (the day the second bomb was dropped, on Nagasaki), King gathered the two messages in the exchange between Marshall and MacArthur and sent them to Nimitz. King told Nimitz to provide his views on the viability of invading Kyushu, with a copy to MacArthur. Clearly, nothing that had transpired since May would have altered Nimitz's view that Olympic was unwise. Ultra now made the invasion appear foolhardy to everyone but MacArthur. But King had not placed a deadline on Nimitz's response, and the Japanese surrender on August 15 allowed Nimitz to avoid starting what was certain to be one of the most tumultuous interservice battles of the whole war. 

My comment, could it be that MacArthur wanted his own D-day invasion, since Ike had his in Europe.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

The "made the invasion appear foolhardy..." part of the article shouldn't be overlooked.


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

billcihak said:


> the article clearly debunks your take elder. The new understanding of the civillian deaths that were occurring while the war continued the belief that the invasion was going to be a disaster, it is in the article for anyone who wants a clearer picture of the actual intelligence going on at the presidential level before dropping the bombs.


 

Well, no, bill, it doesn't clearly debunk it. It reinforces it: of course the Japanese power structure was seeking a more favorable settlement. That they were seeking one at all, though, demonstrates that they were, in fact, preparing to surrender. Period. 

Yes, a land invasion was the least desirable action for both sides. Naturally, for the Japanese, the only response would have been an all-out defense, and an attempt to break American will. Naturally, the U.S. wanted to avoid this-was it truly necessary to drop the atomic bombs to do so? Probably not. Did that go into Truman's decision making? Almost certainly, _as did the advice of people who weren't in possession of enough information,_   and a military complex that wasn't in agreement on how best to proceed. A sustained naval and aerial bombardment *would* have done it.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Another article that debunks the revisionist history of the atomic bombing of Japan:

http://www.essortment.com/did-president-truman-drop-atomic-bomb-61496.html

From this new article:

It was later found that the troop strength on Kyushu was greatly under-estimated, and that by August 6 the Japanese had over 900,000 men stationed on Kyushu, nearly twice as many as thought. Leahy's estimates that the Americans would have a preponderance, when in fact the 767,000 American soldiers who would comprise the landing force were already greatly outnumbered three months before Operation Olympic was actually to begin. By November, Japanese troop strength could easily double or triple, making between 500,000 and 1,000,000 American deaths conceivable.

The only way anyone can judge Truman's motives in dropping the atomic bomb is by analyzing the result of his decision. No one can know, even by reading his personal diary, the exact reasons he had for using the bomb. It was likely a combination of many: punishment, justification of cost, saving lives, and ending the war as quickly as possible. However, it is evident that in the "grand scheme of things" the use of the atomic bomb saved lives. About 105,000 Japanese lost their lives in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While this is a high number, the number who died in the American bombing raids on the six largest Japanese cities is far greater, about 250,000. Consequently, such a large number of deaths is by no means unprecedented. An invasion of Japan would possibly have cost between 250,000 and three million Japanese and American lives and ended the war four months later, at the very earliest. It may be concluded that no more people died in the atomic bombings than would have in an invasion of Kyushu, and that said bombings did have the effect of ending the war more quickly. Truman's motives, therefore, cannot be called into question in light of the results of his decision. At least in this case, the end justifies the means.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

This American thinker article tackles the "Japan was trying to surrender if only we let them keep their emperor," argument:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/hiroshima_hoax_japans_wllingne.html

From the article, from a book mentioned in the article:

[FONT=times new roman,times]A staple of Hiroshima Revisionism has been the contention that the government of Japan was prepared to surrender during the summer of 1945, with the sole proviso that its sacred emperor be retained. President Harry S. Truman and those around him knew this through intercepted Japanese diplomatic messages, the story goes, but refused to extend such an assurance because they _wanted_ the war to continue until atomic bombs became available. The real purpose of using the bombs was not to defeat an already-defeated Japan, but to give the United States a club to use against the Soviet Union. Thus Truman purposely slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Japanese, not to mention untold thousands of other Asians and Allied servicemen who would perish as the war needlessly ground on, primarily to gain diplomatic advantage. [/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]One might think that compelling substantiation would be necessary to support such a monstrous charge, but the revisionists have been unable to provide a single example from Japanese sources. What they have done instead amounts to a variation on the old shell game. They state in their own prose that the Japanese were trying to surrender without citing any evidence and, to show that Truman was aware of their efforts, cite his diary entry of July 18 [1945] referring to a "telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace."[/FONT]

[FONT=times new roman,times]There it is! The smoking gun! But it is nothing of the sort. The message Truman cited did not refer to anything even remotely resembling surrender. It referred instead to the Japanese foreign office's attempt (under the suspicious eyes of the military) to persuade the Soviet Union to broker a negotiated peace that would have permitted the Japanese to retain their prewar empire and their imperial system (not just the emperor) intact. No American president could have accepted such a settlement, as it would have meant abandoning the United States' most basic war aims.[/FONT]

Also from the article, concerning a Japanese author who tried to help the revisionist argument:



[FONT=times new roman,times]Unfortunately for the Pulitzer winners, the Hasegawa book does not support their central contention.  Said Maddox:[/FONT]


[FONT=times new roman,times]What Sherwin and Bird apparently did not know, or hoped their readers did not know, was that although Hasegawa agreed with revisionists on a number of issues, he explicitly rejected the early surrender thesis.  Indeed, Hasegawa in no uncertain terms wrote that "Without the twin shocks of the atomic bombs and the Soviet entry into the war, the Japanese never would have surrendered in August."[/FONT]​ 
[FONT=times new roman,times]Maddox relates that:[/FONT]


[FONT=times new roman,times]Undeterred by this fiasco and still unable to produce even a single document from Japanese sources, Bird has continued to peddle the fiction that "peace" meant the same thing as "surrender."  In a mostly contemptuous review of Sir Max Hastings's _Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 _(_Washington Post Book World, _April 20, 2008), Bird professed to be "appalled by the critical evidence left out."[/FONT]​ ​


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Do you need more sources Elder, or are the several above at least enough to point out that there may be more to the bombing of Japan than some people believe?


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

billcihak said:


> Do you need more sources Elder, or are the several above at least enough to point out that there may be more to the bombing of Japan than some people believe?


 

Well, let's see-you've got some authors, some citations from unseen or substantiated secret communiques from neutral and allied diplomats and other third parties, as well as some communications from the Japanese themselves.

I've got direct quotes from Eisenhower and MacArthur........*no*, I don't need any more sources.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

From the beginning of the article:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp?page=1

But beginning in the 1970s, we have acquired an array of new evidence from Japan and the United States. By far the most important single body of this new evidence consists of secret radio intelligence material, and what it highlights is the painful dilemma faced by Truman and his administration. In explaining their decisions to the public, they deliberately forfeited their best evidence. They did so because under the stringent security restrictions guarding radio intercepts, recipients of this intelligence up to and including the president were barred from retaining copies of briefing documents, from making any public reference to them whatsoever at the time or in their memoirs, and from retaining any record of what they had seen or what they had concluded from it. With a handful of exceptions, they obeyed these rules, both during the war and thereafter.

Collectively, the missing information is known as The Ultra Secret of World War II (after the title of a breakthrough book by Frederick William Winterbotham published in 1974). Ultra was the name given to what became a vast and enormously efficient Allied radio intelligence organization, which secretly unveiled masses of information for senior policymakers. Careful listening posts snatched copies of millions of cryptograms from the air. Code breakers then extracted the true text. The extent of the effort is staggering. By the summer of 1945, Allied radio intelligence was breaking into a million messages a month from the Japanese Imperial Army alone, and many thousands from the Imperial Navy and Japanese diplomats.

All of this effort and expertise would be squandered if the raw intercepts were not properly translated and analyzed and their disclosures distributed to those who needed to know. This is where Pearl Harbor played a role. In the aftermath of that disastrous surprise attack, Secretary of War Henry Stimson recognized that the fruits of radio intelligence were not being properly exploited. He set Alfred McCormack, a top-drawer lawyer with experience in handling complex cases, to the task of formulating a way to manage the distribution of information from Ultra. The system McCormack devised called for funneling all radio intelligence to a handful of extremely bright individuals who would evaluate the flood of messages, correlate them with all other sources, and then write daily summaries for policymakers.

By mid-1942, McCormack's scheme had evolved into a daily ritual that continued to the end of the war--and is in essence the system still in effect today. Every day, analysts prepared three mimeographed newsletters. Official couriers toting locked pouches delivered one copy of each summary to a tiny list of authorized recipients around the Washington area. (They also retrieved the previous day's distribution, which was then destroyed except for a file copy.) Two copies of each summary went to the White House, for the president and his chief of staff. Other copies went to a very select group of officers and civilian officials in the War and Navy Departments, the British Staff Mission, and the State Department. What is almost as interesting is the list of those not entitled to these top-level summaries: the vice president, any cabinet official outside the select few in the War, Navy, and State Departments, anyone in the Office of Strategic Services or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or anyone in the Manhattan Project building the atomic bomb, from Major General Leslie Groves on down. 


When a complete set of the "Magic" Diplomatic Summary for the war years was first made public in 1978, the text contained a large number of redacted (literally whited out) passages. The critics reasonably asked whether the blanks concealed devastating revelations. Release of a nonredacted complete set in 1995 disclosed that the redacted areas had indeed contained a devastating revelation--but not about the use of the atomic bombs. Instead, the redacted areas concealed the embarrassing fact that Allied radio intelligence was reading the codes not just of the Axis powers, but also of some 30 other governments, including allies like France.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

The weekly standard article addresses the claims from the revisionists by pointing to the secret radio intercepts that few had access to and of those few all were prohibited from speaking about till they were released in 1995.  It details the fact that the japanese forces on kyushu were vastly greater than originally believed, that the alleged surrender offer through the russians was not in fact a surrender but a peace offer that would have allowed japan to maintain everything they had gained and that Nimitz himself felt that the invasion would have been a disaster.  If there are any doubts please re-read the three articles.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Another source:  http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/report/other/70-7_23.htm

Page 518
It would be a fruitless task to weigh accurately the relative importance of all the factors leading to the Japanese surrender. There is no doubt that Japan had been defeated by the summer of 1945, if not earlier. But defeat did not mean that the military clique had given up; the Army intended to fight on and had made elaborate preparations for the defense of the homeland. Whether air bombardment and naval blockade or the threat of invasion would have produced an early surrender and averted the heavy losses almost certain to accompany the actual landings in Japan is a moot question. Certainly they had a profound effect on the Japanese position. It is equally difficult to assert categorically that the atomic bomb alone or Soviet intervention alone was the decisive factor in bringing the war to an end. All that can be said on the available evidence is that Japan was defeated in the military sense by August 1945 and that the bombing of Hiroshima, followed by the Soviet Union's declaration of war and the bombing of Nagasaki and the threat of still further bombing, acted as catalytic agents to produce the Japanese decision to surrender. Together they created so extreme a crisis that the Emperor himself, in an unprecedented move, took matters into his own hands and ordered his ministers to surrender. Whether any other set of circumstances would have resolved the crisis and produced the final decision to surrender is a question history cannot yet answer.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Another source on why dropping the bombs was necessary to end the war:

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/at...bate-over-the-decision-to-drop-the-bombs.html

The weekly standard articel points out the intercepted military radio transmissions that pointed to the massive buildup on kyushu before the dropping of the bombs, and the above article points out why the japanese military played a decicive role in refusing to surrender:

While some members of the civilian leadership did use covert diplomatic channels to begin negotiation for peace, on their own it could not negotiate surrender or even a cease-fire. Japan, as a Constitutional Monarchy, could only enter into a peace agreement with the unanimous support of the Japanese cabinet, and this cabinet was dominated by militarists from the Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese Imperial Navy, all of whom were initially opposed to any peace deal. A political stalemate developed between the military and civilian leaders of Japan with the military increasingly determined to fight despite the costs and odds.


****the determination of the japanese military to continue fighting before the bombs dropped:

Historian Victor Davis Hanson points to the increased Japanese resistance, futile as it was in retrospect, as the war came to its inevitable conclusion. The Battle of Okinawa showed this determination to fight on at all costs. More than 120,000 Japanese and 12,000 American troops were killed in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater, just 8 weeks before Japan's final surrender. When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945 and carried out Operation August Storm, the Japanese Imperial Army ordered its ill-supplied and weakened forces in Manchuria to fight to the last man, an order which it carried out. Major General Masakazu Amanu, chief of the operations section at Japanese Imperial Headquarters, stated that he was absolutely convinced his defensive preparations, begun in early 1944, could repel any Allied invasion of the home islands with minimum losses. The Japanese would not give up easily because of their strong tradition of pride and honor: Many followed the Samurai code and would fight until the very last man was dead.

****Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, it took intervention by the Emperor to end the war:

After the realization that the destruction of Hiroshima was from a nuclear weapon, the civilian leadership gained more and more traction in its argument that Japan had to concede defeat and accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration. However, even after the destruction of Nagasaki, the Emperor himself needed to intervene to end a deadlock in the cabinet.

****How did the bombings help end the war from the Japanese side:

According to some Japanese historians, Japanese civilian leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized on the bombing as a new argument to force surrender. Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest advisors, stated: "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945, called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." According to these historians and others, the pro-peace civilian leadership was able to use the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince the military that no amount of courage, skill and fearless combat could help Japan against the power of atomic weapons. Akio Morita, founder of Sony and a Japanese Naval officer during the war, also concludes that it was the atomic bomb and not conventional bombings from B-29s that convinced the Japanese military to agree to peace.

****What the bombings may have stopped:

Supporters of the bombing also point out that waiting for the Japanese to surrender was not a cost-free option&#8212;as a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of about 200,000 per month. The firebombing had killed well over 100,000 people in Japan, since February of 1945, directly and indirectly. That intensive conventional bombing would have continued prior to an invasion. The submarine blockade and the U.S. Army Air Force's mining operation, Operation Starvation, had effectively cut off Japan's imports. A complementary operation against Japan's railways was about to begin, isolating the cities of southern Honshu from the food grown elsewhere in the Home Islands. This, combined with the delay in relief supplies from the Allies, could have resulted in a far greater death toll in Japan, due to famine and malnutrition, than actually occurred in the attacks. "Immediately after the defeat, some estimated that 10 million people were likely to starve to death," noted historian Daikichi Irokawa. Meanwhile, in addition to the Soviet attacks, offensives were scheduled for September in southern China, and Malaysia.

Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944. The order dealt with the disposal and execution of all Allied POWs, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place. (It is also likely that, considering Japan's previous treatment of POWs, were the Allies to wait out Japan and starve it, the Japanese would have killed all Allied POWs and Chinese prisoners.)


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

An article by victor Davis Hanson that also addresses Eisenhower and the others...

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson080505.html

From the article:


Later generals Hap Arnold, Dwight Eisenhower, Curtis LeMay, Douglas Macarthur, and Admirals William Leahy and William Halsey all reportedly felt the bomb was unnecessary, being either militarily redundant or unnecessarily punitive to an essentially defeated populace.

Yet such opponents of the decision shied away from providing a rough estimate of how many more would have died in the aggregate &#8212; Americans, British, Australians, Asians, Japanese, and Russians &#8212; through conventional bombing, continuous fighting in the Pacific, amphibious invasion of the mainland, or the ongoing onslaught of the Red Army had the conflict not come to an abrupt halt nine days later and only after a second nuclear drop on Nagasaki.

****  'nuff said....****


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## Bruno@MT (Apr 10, 2011)

I have spoken with people who are expert on Japanese culture, with people who've married Japanese, and I've heard second hand accounts from people who were around at the time. They all say the same things (incl the Japanese): the Japanese would have defended their country with bamboo spears if necessary, and be slaughtered wholesale. A Japanese mother in law of a friend of mine said she was actually surprised that the Japanese gave up after the 2nd bomb already. It is true that the bombs were unnecessary in the sense that the war would have ended eventually, but with much more casualties on both sides. Dropping the bombs over sea to prove their existence was also not an option. Propaganda and information containment being what they are during a war, the info would have been suppressed on the Japanese side.

I have to side with Bill on this one, based on the information and impressions I have.
The bombs saved lives on both sides.
Additionally, one way or another someone would have fired a first nuke. As bad as it was, the kiloton bombs with limited yield are much preferable to the megaton hydrogen bombs which came after those initial bombs. the fact that people across the world became afraid of them is a good thing because it gave birth to cold war instead of hot war. Like sting said: What might save us -me and you- is if the russians love their children too.

@gran: the real test has not been done, namely would someone knowingly drop the bomb. The fighter pilots dropping the first 2 did not know what they were dropping. Sure, they knew it was special, but there is a difference between knowing you're dropping a big bomb, and knowing you're going to level a city and annihilate tens of thousands of people in one hit.

And those were only firecrackers compared to the megaton bombs that are stockpiled today. One of my friends was the weapons officer aboard a strategic submarine. He was the one who would push the button for the actual launch, during the cold war. He told me that it used to weigh on his shoulders like a rock. In the end he requested transfer to a different position because if a nuclear holocaust was going to happen, he did not want to be the one appearing before St. Peter with millions of deaths to his name.

Similar stories exist among other US and Soviet branches. It seems that the people actually in charge of these systems are very concious about the consequences of their actions, and definitely not trigger happy.  I daresay people will push the button if worst comes to worst, but I don't believe for a second it will be an easy decision.


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## Blade96 (Apr 10, 2011)

i still believe also that they dropped the bomb to scare the russians.


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## Bruno@MT (Apr 10, 2011)

Blade96 said:


> i still believe also that they dropped the bomb to scare the russians.



It was not necessary to bomb 2 Japanese cities to do that. Ending the war was a much more pressing problem, and the Russians at that point were still allies, and completely incapable of attacking the US. Nuclear intimidation games continued a long time, ending with the Soviets detonating a 50 megaton bomb prototype of a 100+ megaton design above nova zembla. Had they wanted to intimidate the Russians, they could have waited for a more convenient time.

While the explosion of the 2 bomb would undoubtedly have an effect on the Russians, breaking the Japanese spirit was much more important with the only alternative being a nationwide ground war with all the brutality of Iwo Jima. It would not have been a major consideration.


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

Bruno@MT said:


> While the explosion of the 2 bomb would undoubtedly have an effect on the Russians, breaking the Japanese spirit was much more important with the only alternative being a nationwide ground war with all the brutality of Iwo Jima. It would not have been a major consideration.


 

We didn't need to drop nukes to do this. The Japanese Navy was destroyed. They had no air force.Their spirit was already very close to broken, that's why they surprised so many of their countrymen by surrendering after "just two bombs." We didn't need to invade, or drop atomic bombs-we could simply have bombarded them from ships and the air for a couple of weeks. 

Also, Col. Tibbets and Col. McSweeny, the _bomber_ pilots who flew those missions, and their air crews were well aware of what they were carrying-they had had special training for the weapons and their delivery, and were among some of the first to see film of the test of the plutonium device, later called "Fat Man," at White Sands. They were regularly flown from Wendover field in Utah to Los Alamos to receive training and briefings on the weapons.

Little Boy, the uranium weapon-the least efficient of the two, dropped on Hiroshima, killed 70-80,000 people instantly, and as many as an additional 200,000 in the next 5 years. Fat Man, the plutonium gadget, dropped on Nagasaki-the secondary target for that mission-killed about the same number instantly, and an additional 80,000 in the subsequent years. We also had bombs ready for additional bombings by the end of August, if the Japanese didn't surrender.

So, I dunno, we fried close to half a million people in an instant. How many lives did we "save?"

We did this because we *could*-nothing can convince me otherwise.







Bruno@MT said:


> Similar stories exist among other US and Soviet branches. It seems that the people actually in charge of these systems are very concious about the consequences of their actions, and definitely not trigger happy. I daresay people will push the button if worst comes to worst, but I don't believe for a second it will be an easy decision.


 
Having worked closely with quite a few of the people "actually in charge of these systems," I can say that while the majority are extremely sober and professional, there is an element that is absolutely in love with nuclear weapons.


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## granfire (Apr 10, 2011)

I think by 45 the guys with the triggers were itching to use it. 
Too bad the Germans caved by April, or they would have lit Berlin up.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

I have to point back to the articles that point out that though they could not win the war and the allies had them stopped, they were not done fighting.  My uncle was on a troop ship that was heading to japan for the invasion when the war ended.  The article also points out the famine that would have taken place if carpet bombing of Japan had continued for several weeks, which it would have had to do, and the fact that if an invasion had ocurred the japanese would have slaughtered all the civillian and military p.o.w.s on the mainland.  Also, in the article, it mentions the resistance after the initial landing, once the allies had progressed into the interior of the country.  Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the other battles had already shown the japanese did not surrender when they were losing.


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## billc (Apr 10, 2011)

Eight weeks before the bomb was dropped:

From one of the articles:

Historian Victor Davis Hanson points to the increased Japanese resistance, futile as it was in retrospect, as the war came to its inevitable conclusion. The Battle of Okinawa showed this determination to fight on at all costs. More than 120,000 Japanese and 12,000 American troops were killed in the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater, just 8 weeks before Japan's final surrender. When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945 and carried out Operation August Storm, the Japanese Imperial Army ordered its ill-supplied and weakened forces in Manchuria to fight to the last man, an order which it carried out. Major General Masakazu Amanu, chief of the operations section at Japanese Imperial Headquarters, stated that he was absolutely convinced his defensive preparations, begun in early 1944, could repel any Allied invasion of the home islands with minimum losses. The Japanese would not give up easily because of their strong tradition of pride and honor: Many followed the Samurai code and would fight until the very last man was dead.


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## Twin Fist (Apr 10, 2011)

elder999 said:


> So, I dunno, we fried close to half a million people in an instant. How many lives did we "save?"




lots of american lives.

does that matter to you?


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## elder999 (Apr 10, 2011)

Twin Fist said:


> lots of american lives.
> 
> does that matter to you?


In one way, no, not really. My dad was 17 when WWII ended, and my mom was 9 , and in Wyoming.


In another, no........, not really. You can't t enumerate those lives...... hell, most of them are dead by now.



Hell, we dropped those bombs and took "American lives."


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## Twin Fist (Apr 10, 2011)

sort of figured that was what you would say


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