Nuclear: Deciding Whether to Use the Bomb 

We also have to remember that our leaders at the time, both civilian and military, were responsible for American lives. Given the fact that the Japanese had extensively fortified the home islands and reserved large numbers of regular troops to stiffen the resistance, the American leadership would have been derelict in their duty to not use any method at their disposal to end the war quickly. The American people wouldn't have stood for anything less.

I grew up around WWII veterans in Ohio, many of whom were Marine vets or otherwise served in the Pacific. Of those, not one ever questioned the use of the two bombs. Most of the combat veterans credited the bombs with saving their lives. The next generation began the widespread questioning of the actions. These people were never in Theater or witnessed the horrors that preceded the bombings. The "old" guy in the First Marine Division who watched almost all of his buddies die on numerous beaches, in a platoon with fresh faces he barely knew, after fighting an intractable enemy, approved thankfully. He was an "expert."

Were the weapon not used the Japanese army would have continued to fight. The Japanese had almost a million troops in Manchuria which was why President Truman wanted the Soviets to help. Also my father was a sailor on an LCS (USS LCS (L-3) 81) currently training in the Philippines for the invasion so I have a very personal interest in the war ending quickly as I probably wouldn't be here today .

Japanese doctors were still performing vivisection on captured American aircrew right up to August 6th. There was no sense of surrender that revisionists have proposed. The peace feelers sent through U.S.S.R. were unrealistic and everyone knew it. Truman had no choice, actually.

Yes it was the right thing to do. President Truman made the right call. My dad was on the USS Louisville CA 28 from 1943-46 and he thought that WW2 was never going to end for US Navy ships were being hit one after another by the kamikaze. My dad witnessed - (52) sailors and Rear Admiral Theodore Chandler buried at sea due to (3) kamikaze hits in the Pacific. This is from Wikipedia: Her repairs completed on April 10, 1945, Louisville delivered Admiral Halsey's 50 officers and 100 staff to the battleship Missouri at Guam and Louisville returned to the Pacific to join TF 54 in providing gunfire support for ground forces on Okinawa. On June 5, 1945, she was again hit by a kamikaze(initially identified as a friendly plane). Four twin 20 AA cannon opened up to set the kamikaze ablaze prior to hitting Louisville which killed eight sailors on a quad 40 mm AA gun mount, injured 45 sailors, bent the number 1 smoke stack and cut Louisville's seaplane off and left only the pontoon on the catapult.[7] Louisville was back on the gun line by 9 June, to remain on station until ordered back to Pearl Harbor for repairs on 15 June After USS Louisville was repaired she was getting ready for the big Invasion of Japan which would have been thousands of lives on both sides. God Bless our service men and service women - past and present!

One thing most people forget is that the atomic bomb was never intended for Japan, it was fear of Hitler and his efforts to develop a bomb that drove the Manhattan Project. By the time the bomb was ready, Germany had already surrendered. If not Hamburg or Berlin would have been the first target. I've seen several documentaries which stated that even after the 2 atomic bomb attacks a hardcore element in the Japanese government wanted to keep fighting & even attempted a coup d'etat which failed. Due to the allied blockade, Japan was short on everything and famine was on the horizon. Even without an invasion, the death toll among the Japanese population would have been horrendous. So comments below stating that atomic bomb by ending the war quickly saved untold lives on both sides is correct. It's a complex topic which will continue to create discussion & debate.

Yes, I think the dropping of the bombs was the right thing for the US to do. As others have said, our leaders were responsible for the American and Allied lives, not the lives of the Japanese. I have no idea where I heard/read it, but I heard that the US expected so many casualties from the Invasion, both living and dead, that we minted a LOT of Purple Heart Medals for them. That we had made so many in preparation for the Invasion, that even up to the early 2000s, we were still using that batch made for the Invasion of Japan, in 1945, for our current (at least early 2000s) military casualties.

The fact they decided to start using kamikaze pilots near the end should point to the fanaticism Japan was capable at the time. It's not hard to imagine japan using some of these civilians killed as sacrifices to stop an invasion by suicide attacks. Another thing to think of at the time was the lack knowledge of long term effects of nuclear weapons. I mean we allowed our own troops to stand near explosions as human test dummies.....

Excellent analysis and dissertation. Thank you, Ryan.

There was a naval strategy of literally starving out the Japanese by blockade and bombing. However the US Army opposed it alone

My elder cousin was a Marine already wounded at Iwo Jima that would have been in the invasion as would my father who had volunteered for it while in Germany. Ergo, I have a strong interest in anything that would have made the invasion unnecessary. Note also that the Russians declared war on Japan at the same time and were readying an invasion of the northern islands making a two front war possible. In some statements, the Japanese government referred to either or both (nukes and Russians) as a cause for capitulation. The invasion could have been stopped or rendered moot if the population simply refused to fight. I believe that the emperor was beginning to think mass surrenders would be possible. After a firebombing in Tokyo, he toured the area in his limo and noticed that only a few bowed although his vehicle was clearly marked and elicited respect on previous tours. They just stared at him. Worse, this possibly presaged the collapse of the emperor system at least for those who had lost everything. Act now, or lose it all. I believe there were some high level Japanese officers who followed principles higher than honor. Honor and duty are NOT the ultimate warrior's principle. If you are a national level warrior, as in pledged to the emperor (or United States), your highest principle is preservation of Japan (Japanese people or the US) and the emperor with it (or government...preservation of an individual is not a US principle). However, preserving the emperor alone gets you nothing as soon neither would exist. If continued fighting will clearly lead to the destruction of both, then your principle of honor is to surrender and vice versa. That is, the principle of honor could lead you to either refuse surrender or require it depending upon conditions with the goal your countrymen are preserved. The US Soldier's Code of Conduct used to acknowledge this fact (but sadly now does not). Therefore, a demonstration that your plans of defense are moot (no landings) but that Japan itself will effectively disappear at little or no cost to the enemy requires surrender...and they did. By the by, there were only three bombs to use at the moment but within a month or two, the Hanover plants and Oppenheimer's suggestion to use 'Uranium - Plutonium' alloys and the other improvements like stand off distance (implosion charge to core), Tritium in the core, hollow spheres and much more would have boosted efficiency so much that bomb production would have quickly increased. There would have been enough to make Japan glow in the dark (sad, because I worked there for a short while in the 90s and have friends there). Note B-29s would then be released for even more harbor mining and don't forget the Navy's definition of an island, a piece of land surrounded by submarines. Totally isolated as they are ground to dust.

I did read that the most conservative estimates of US casualties for an invasion were around 250,000+, with Japanese casualties 4 or 5 times that. It's also a sobering thought that the number of Purple Hearts struck in anticipation were sufficient for the Korean and Vietnam wars, and many years beyond.

It is easy with 20/20 hindsight to say something else should have been done. War is hell. Bombing civil targets in the first place could be considered a moral dilemma. With that being said the destruction of your enemies will to fight is very difficult. I know personally that my uncles and father were getting on troopships in Europe to go join the invasion forces in the pacific. The Japanese High Command was suicidal in their intent to fight to the end. The emperor made the correct decision to surrender to avoid the total destruction of the Japanese people. The bomb saved my uncles and father and I conclude that it was the best choice at that time.

The only thing i don't agree with is the term 'use in combat'. Use in war, sure, but nobody cand seriously claim to be in combat with civilians.

The reason we pressed forward to use the nuclear weapons which was not spoken of is that at Potsdam we had agreed to a divided Japan if communist Russia could get into the war against Japan before they surrendered. Since Japan was holding out, it looked as if this was going to be the case and we did not want a divided Japan like we had agreed to with Europe. The two combat uses of the nuclear weapons saved Japan from this fate which we did not want to have to face especially since China was going communist and in league with Russia. It worked. But since Russia was nominally our comrade and ally in the war the US government did not want to broadcast that we were trying to keep them out of someplace like Japan. It was just as well to keep driving home the idea that we were saving American lives in a massive invasion, which was true, but looking ahead strategically to the postwar world, I think you can see why we used those weapons as quickly as we could because Russia was getting closer and closer to Japan.

The Japanese were training their elderly and their women to use spears in human wave attacks, and children were to be given suicide bombs and told to jump under tanks to disable them. Some modern research suggests a death toll in the opening weeks of the invasion of over 1 million Allied troops, to say nothing of the Japanese casualties. Stockpiles of suicide planes and manned torpedoes were waiting in their thousands to blow up landing craft. fortifications were being made that would have made Iwo Jima seem tame by comparison, with the entirety of the Japanese islands to work with. There would be no civilians since the Japanese government was going to be forcing everyone to attack the invaders (or execute them if they resisted such an "honorable" suicide), and the Allied soldiers would have been forced to assume that anyone was a threat and kill them all. The nukes were a mercy.

hands down the right call, the Japanese would have fought until the emperor had had enough and if the military had their way they wouldn't have surrendered even after the bombing but they couldn't openly apposed the emperor's wishes after the Japanese people had been told he wanted to accept the unconditional surrender to protect them. with out the bombings there would have been millions more casualties on all sides.

definetly saved more than killed! everyone whos against cant hear the facts

FA,FO

One of the reasons to use this weapon was certainly also the demonstration of power, in particular towards the Soviets. There is some evidence that the president made the decision prior to the Potsdam conference should Japan not surrender thereafter, namely a conversation with Stalin that hinted at a new weapon that could end the war quickly. It feeds the theory that the weapon existed and inevitably had to be used. There were also considerations that it could be detonated at sea out of Japan so it would be seen. But the fear of a failure allegedly buried that plan - though, it could also have been a dud on Hiroshima... I dont know, in hindsight its hard to justify nuking civilians but under the impression of being at war for years in a ever more brutal way, it certainly was an easier decision to make, last but not least due to the ignorance of what the consequences would be. Different times...

A difficult subject.

Japan was done they were on there way to surrender they had nothing left, we just had a new toy we had to show off