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Topography. If Iwo Jima was bloody, it would have been a Sunday school picnic compared to the bloodbath that would have accompanied any conventional invasion; for the Japanese as well as the GI's.Perhaps they suspected that Hirohito had only a limited tolerance for more senseless bloodshed?
Well this is where my friend's argument goes, that if the US didn't want a blood bath, they shouldn't have invaded at all he says. He said they wouldn't have felt compelled to use nukes if they just didn't invade at all and left it alone.
However, and this is just my perception of it, how the come the US used nukes to avoid a big blood bath here, but they were willing to endure big blood baths in wars after the nuclear age, without using nukes to avoid bloodbaths?
Well this is where my friend's argument goes, that if the US didn't want a blood bath, they shouldn't have invaded at all he says. He said they wouldn't have felt compelled to use nukes if they just didn't invade at all and left it alone.
However, and this is just my perception of it, how the come the US used nukes to avoid a big blood bath here, but they were willing to endure big blood baths in wars after the nuclear age, without using nukes to avoid bloodbaths?
Against IJ in WWII? Yah, I suppose we could have starved IJ out - but that would mean the civilians would die first, the IJ military & government functionaries would be the last to go. Too long, & the Soviets would likely have helped themselves to more of the Sakhalins, maybe tried for Hokkaido if they were feeling frisky. No, we'd (the US & allies) done the hard part, forcing the IJ military back across the Pacific. The final act is to force their surrender, & not leave them hanging to conspire about a stab in the back, like Germany after WWI. Better a clean end.
As for currently, 1. We're still in the nuclear age.
2. What big blood baths are we talking about? Korea? Vietnam? Those didn't rise to even the level of a conventional war, like WWII. I suppose we could have flattened sizable pieces of both Korea & Vietnam with nuclear weapons - but what would have been the point? That would have rendered the countries uninhabitable for who-knows-how-long, plus collateral damage downwind, poisoning the seas, fish, seafood.
IJ during WWII (& before, going back to the early 193s) worked very hard @ giving the impression that they were cold-blooded killers. They cut their way through soldiers, civilians, enemy POWs, enemy civilians. We had developed nuclear bombs & delivery systems mainly to use against Germany, but Germany surrendered before we could deliver weapons to them. IJ wasn't so fortunate, & by the time IJ was trying to frighten us with horror stories about their ruthlessness, it was too late. We'd already targeted select ports/military facilities/manufacturing sites/cities, developed the B-29s, & finally captured airbases close enough to IJ to fly the nuclear missions.
However, and this is just my perception of it, how the come the US used nukes to avoid a big blood bath here, but they were willing to endure big blood baths in wars after the nuclear age, without using nukes to avoid bloodbaths?
Operation Downfall - the planned invasion of Japan - would have almost certainly entailed American casualties far beyond the 58k dead/300k+ wounded U.S. troops in Vietnam. Surely, it's obvious why the nuclear option is increasingly likely the higher the cost of the alternative, no? Anyway, the question wasn't one of to nuke or not to nuke. At the time of the Japanese surrender, the United States expected to produce approximately one plutonium bomb every 10 days, which were to be stockpiled for use in the invasion. It was intended that half a dozen to a dozen or more nuclear devices would be used against Japanese forces immediately ahead of the initial invasion. The targets, not the use of nukes, were the variable.
Also, the hypothetical use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam has numerous obvious shortcomings, among them the fact that the guerrilla forces of the enemy were dispersed and less vulnerable to such weapons, to say nothing of the fact that they occupied swaths of South Vietnam. We Have To Nuke It In Order To Save It might've been a slogan a bit beyond the pale, no? Then there's the fact that the political price of breaking the nuclear taboo - which did not yet exist in 1945 - would have been severe, not to mention dangerous. Keeping that genie in the bottle was prioritized.
We did have the American Volunteer Group (the Flying Tigers) in China well before Pearl Harbor. We may have upped our support in China but I doubt it.
as is usual in these threads we are seemingly off topic...i did respond to the questions pages ago
the Japanese attacked US forces in the Philippines on DEC 10th..so essentially nothing different would have occurred...(inexplicably MacArthur was caught off-guard as well)
the Japanese were terrified of the Russians for some reason and once Russia came into the war it was over...
there seemed to be missed attempts to surrender whether on purpose or not its hard to say missed translations and such....
Truman had no say-so in the atomic bombing...it was just bureaucratic inertia that used the bomb it was not until after the two bombs that some thought presidential authority would be a nice thing
Well this is where my friend's argument goes, that if the US didn't want a blood bath, they shouldn't have invaded at all he says. He said they wouldn't have felt compelled to use nukes if they just didn't invade at all and left it alone.
However, and this is just my perception of it, how the come the US used nukes to avoid a big blood bath here, but they were willing to endure big blood baths in wars after the nuclear age, without using nukes to avoid bloodbaths?
The purpose of an invasion is to compel Japan to surrender, as fighting and death was still going on in occupied territories. Major swaths of China were still occupied. The terms of surrender, per allied agreement, were unconditional. Isolating Japan and starving them out would present it's own problems besides what is listed above - namely that it would cause more death in Japan than a nuclear weapon and even possibly an invasion, besides the unacceptable though of World War II dragging on for years more.
In regards to nukes - during WW2 it was simply seen as a big massive bomb. A tool of total war. It didn't have the political/social connotation as a weapon of mass destruction it had afterwards and no other country had it.
The usage of nuclear weapons in future wars were not practical and there were no comparative "big blood baths" for US troops equal to WW2 (over half a million casualties, and anticipated over 1 to possibly 4 million more for an invasion of Japan). Also, these were proxy wars involving major powers that, by the 50s, also had nuclear weapons. Retaliation and expansion of these limited wars was a risk. Nuclear weapons were considered in the Korean War of course, resulting in MacArthur's dismissal.
Oh okay I see. My friend who is obviously opposed to nuclear weapons says that the Japanese should have went after goverment or military targets rather than civilian cities, if they were going to use nukes. Do you think that's true though, or are the civilians no different than the military, in this situation?
Oh okay I see. My friend who is obviously opposed to nuclear weapons says that the Japanese should have went after goverment or military targets rather than civilian cities, if they were going to use nukes. Do you think that's true though, or are the civilians no different than the military, in this situation?
IJ didn't have nuclear weapons. Or are you asking something different?
Oh okay I see. My friend who is obviously opposed to nuclear weapons says that the Japanese should have went after goverment or military targets rather than civilian cities, if they were going to use nukes. Do you think that's true though, or are the civilians no different than the military, in this situation?
the line had been crossed way earlier in the war the US firebombed something like 60 percent of ALL Japanese cities 100,000 dead in Tokyo alone
Oh okay I see. My friend who is obviously opposed to nuclear weapons says that the Japanese should have went after goverment or military targets rather than civilian cities, if they were going to use nukes. Do you think that's true though, or are the civilians no different than the military, in this situation?
I guess you are talking about the US using Nukes, not Japan using nukes.
Hiroshima, as the headquarters of the 2nd IJA Army, WAS a military target and most of the casualties, about 40,000, were soldiers not civilians. Nagasaki was a secondary target because the original was clouded over - they were a heavy industrial city with military shipyards and steel foundries, etc. thus classified as a military target as well.
Regardless, it had already been established in that brutal war that bombing of civilian population center was an accepted practice by both sides Axis and Allies. The terrible reality of the concept known as Total War.
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We took them @ their word
