re: Was the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki necessary?

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As far as the atomic bombing of Japan goes, they didn't surrender after Hiroshima. They didn't even immediately surrender after Nagasaki. I think it took 5 or 6 days for them to throw in the towel.

We - Curtis LeMay and the USAAF - had been fire bombing the shite out of Japanese cities for about 5 months by early August. We were slaughtering the civilian population for months and the Japanese wouldn't give up. So, yeah, they needed to experience the atomic bombs.

After the atomic bombing, LeMay was asked how he felt about killing 50,000 in Hiroshima (an early death toll estimate). LeMay being LeMay said something like, "I feel fine. It's not a big deal. I've been killing two hundred thousand a night since March."

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I posted the above (along w/ some observations about Dresden) quote 5 pages ago. The Japanese may have technically been "militarily defeated", but they had no intention of quitting and they were still capable of inflicting harm on the Allies, as greatly proven by the casualty figures at Okinawa. An amphibious invasion of the Home Islands would have been costly to the Allies and catastrophic for the Japanese civilian population.

Japan is lucky the Manhattan Project was successful. An Allied invasion would have killed way more than 200,000 of them.

Correct. Thats what I meant by a moral, just war. A war in which we were attacked and our way of life was threatened.

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Thread hijack - who's a better golfer, Tom Watson or Arnold Palmer?

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Jack Nicklaus you fricking heathen

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We killed more people firebombing Tokyo and Dresden than we did in Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

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Everybody always talks about Tokyo because we really hammered it in early March. Estimates vary, but in the neighborhood of 250,000 were incinerated. But the reality is that over the next 5 months we firebombed almost every city in Japan and wiped out huge numbers of civilians.

We firebombed so many cities that our target list for the atomic bombs was severely limited. We wanted to use the atomic bomb on an undamaged area to allow for a more accurate bomb damage assessment. There weren't many places left to choose from for the target list. It came down to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, Niigata, Yokohama and Kyoto. There were some generals who lobbied for bombing the Emperor's Palace in Tokyo just for the psychological effect, but they were overruled since Tokyo was already largely obliterated and had no military significance left.

An old Imperial City, Kyoto was removed removed at the request of Henry Stimson, Secr of the Navy. Yokohama was also removed, I think because the Allies planned on using its port during the eventual occupation, but I'm not 100% positive. Kokura is the luckiest city in Japan. It was the primary target for Bock's Car, so they diverted to their secondary target and smoked Nagasaki.

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Kokura is the luckiest city in Japan. It was the primary target for Bock's Car, so they diverted to their secondary target and smoked Nagasaki.

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A faculty member at LSU-E during the 1980s had some connection to either Bockscar or The Great Artiste, either ground crew or flight crew, IIRC.

I think one interesting aspect of this issue that is being forgotten is the mind set of the military at that time.
It is very easy for me with no animosity toward the Japanese war machine to question the wisdom and necessity of using nuclear weapons on Japan.
The decision makers at that time had lost friends and loved ones to the war in the Pacific. They had friends used for bayonet practice, tortured to dead in incredibly inhuman ways. They had seen the Japanese fight to the last man on nearly every island taken. They had seen the after effects of Japanese occupation on civilian populations. They lost friends in the merciless sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. They knew of the Bataan death march etc etc etc.
I seriously doubt any of the men that decided to use nuclear bombs on Japan ever gave it a second thought. My uncle that served in the pacific and my dad that was staging for the invasion of the Japanese mainland certainly had no issues with the use of nuclear weapons to hasten the end of the war.

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did it save at least 1 american life?


no

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My father who was sitting on a troop transport in the Philippines waiting to be included in the first wave of the American invasion of Japan would disagree with you.

And not politely mind you.

Was it necessary? Probably not but frick em.

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Does anyone know why Tokyo wasn’t the primary target?

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Yes. Read my post further up this page.

ETA: Here's the pertinent paragraph, in case you're one of those TLDR short attention span types.

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We firebombed so many cities that our target list for the atomic bombs was severely limited. We wanted to use the atomic bomb on an undamaged area to allow for a more accurate bomb damage assessment. There weren't many places left to choose from for the target list. It came down to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kokura, Niigata, Yokohama and Kyoto. There were some generals who lobbied for bombing the Emperor's Palace in Tokyo just for the psychological effect, but they were overruled since Tokyo was already largely obliterated and had no military significance left.

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