In all likelihood, the two nuclear bombs killed fewer people than the bombing that otherwise would have occurred.
They certainly killed less people than the bombing that had already occurred - the destruction of Tokyo alone likely killed more people than either atomic bomb.
There's no real consensus in the alternative history conjecture space, and no way to resolve the theories floated, Gar Alperovitz (for one example) made the argument that
* that Japan was already defeated at the time the decision to use the bomb was made, and that US intelligence already knew this;
* that Japan had been suing for peace and was ready to surrender without an invasion;
* that the real reason the bomb was used was so to demonstrate its power to the Soviet Union, in an attempt to exert more influence on them in the postwar;
* and that Japanese Emperor’s surrender statement invoked the bomb only as a politically-acceptable “excuse” for his people, when actually he surrendered primarily because of the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
These claims are more about politics than anything. Its an attempt to retcon history to vilify the US. The Japanese had never been invaded and that was a huge point of pride. They were training the civilians for a guerrilla war. Just because you can find a person in the Japanese government who wanted to surrender at that point (and there were) doesn't mean that's the decision that would have been taken.
PS That 3rd point is especially specious...if it were true, no 2nd bomb would have been used. PPS Stuff like this is why historians don't like nor will engage with hypotheticals or the alternative history folks. Its clearly politically motivated, not a good faith attempt to understand history.
An attempt to vilify ... the side that eagerly deployed nuclear weapons on civilian targets? I'm from the US and I'm not someone who is blind to pragmatism but your argument here just seems completely absurd to me. We clearly committed an atrocity with somewhere between minimal to no legitimate justification.
Then again, after seeing the adjacent comment about avoiding soviet involvement it occurs to me that perhaps we inadvertently did them a favor in a roundabout way. Japan probably would have lost a lot more than the kuril islands otherwise.
>Stimson wrote in his diary afterwards that after his briefing, Truman felt “the terrible responsibility that such destruction placed upon us here and himself.” [1]
[1] “Memorandum of Conference with the President, August 8, 1945 at 10:45am,” in Stimson diary (8 August 1945), Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (MS 465), Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
You can certainly choose to believe that the decision makers were eager to use nukes and didn’t consider other paths, but you have to acknowledge that opinion is coming entirely from your own intuition and intentionally excludes all contrary evidence.
"Discussed Manhattan (it is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told P.M. of telegram from Jap Emperor [actually from the Foreign Secretary] asking for peace. Stalin also read his answer to me. It was satisfactory. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan [A-bomb] appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time."
And on top of this, the Japanese had been negotiating their surrender with the ostensibly neutral USSR hoping to get more favorable conditions with their assistance. And the US had been secretly intercepting these cables and knew all about it. [2] And on top of this the US had also already created another secret agreement with the USSR such that they would declare war on Japan on August 8th, which would end any hope at all for Japan. We nuked them on August 6th, and then again on the 9th.
It was completely unnecessary.
[1] - https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28466-document-47-trumans...
[2] - https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/28458-document-39b-magic-...
The problem is that he did not, independently, have the authority to make such an offer. And in the mainland things were also confused. The Emperor was treated as a borderline divine figure, but that also meant he was mostly hands off except as a lost resort. He was pushing for surrender behind the scenes, but the war council was the one making the decisions of what would be offered, and they were completely divided. Half wanted to fight, and half wanted peace.
This division continued even after the nukes and Soviet invasion. What changed is they chose to allow the Emperor to make the final call, and he chose to surrender as he had been angling for for quite some time already. The nukes played little role in this decision. The pro-war Japanese correctly believed that we couldn't have many such weapons and were, in any case, prepared to fight to the last Japanese because they thought it'd be glorious. The thing that did change their mind was the Soviets entering the war meaning they not only no longer had any intermediary with with which to hope for more favorable terms, but also were now facing a massive invasion from the north as well.
The diary is full of revealing quotes like "Discussed Manhattan (it is a success). Decided to tell Stalin about it. Stalin had told P.M. of telegram from Jap Emperor [actually from the Foreign Secretary] asking for peace. Stalin also read his answer to me. It was satisfactory. Believe Japs will fold up before Russia comes in. I am sure they will when Manhattan [A-bomb] appears over their homeland. I shall inform Stalin about it at an opportune time."
For some timeline the US had secretly arranged for Russia to declare war on Japan on August 8th. We nuked them first on August 6th, and then again on the 9th. The goal was to get them to surrender to the US before the Soviets made significant inroads in Japan.
Do you think what they reveal is the truth? Was the diary meant to be published and become "a source"? Was Truman informed about everything important going on in the US? About the reality (the truth) of the Manhattan Project? Did he even need to know? Wasn't it preferable for him to simply believe in order to play his role?
Just some questions to ponder as to the quality of this source and what can be deduced from it.
No one was eager. This sort of lie destroys discussion. This site is only about discussion, so please don't keep trying to destroy the only thing the site is about.
There are no moral winners in war.
But it remains true that if Japan or Germany had had the bomb, they'd have bombed civilians without compunction, discussion, or regret.
It took two bombs to get Japan to surrender. “A surrender is in play” means zilch.
We should remember further that after the second bomb was dropped AND the Soviet entry into the war AND the emperor specifically ordering them to surrender the militarists in the Japanese government still attempted to carry out a coup to stop the surrender and continue the war.
The Japanese would not agree to that
They might have agreed to a cease fire and reduced overseas possessions. A defeat, but not surrender
Make up your own mind of continuing the war to enforce total surrender
Also, people who are ready to surrender don't need to be nuked twice.
The question remains whether in fact Japan "needed" to be nuked even once - it's unknown whether the ongoing city by city destruction would have resolved WWII.
Further, did they "need" to be nuked a second time so quickly (within three days)? That second nuke was not to force a surrender (just as the first wasn't) - the two bombings were two live tests of two separate weapon designs untested in the field of war.
Apparently so. Most people will run up the white flag after being nuked once, you see.
It was important to make them think that we had a whole stockpile of them. Otherwise, twice might not have been enough.
- Heinrich Himmler
“I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches, who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future, which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret.”
- Oliver Cromwell
“It was no longer a question of merely dispersing the crowd, but one of producing a sufficient moral effect, from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more especially throughout the Punjab.”
- Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer
- kstenerud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions_...
Plenty of the survivors of the nuclear bombings and the fire bombings writings went on to be published. You can read them yourselves but generally speaking the fire bombings were way, way, worse.