As a Stanford grad student I spent several years working at the Hoover Institution. I interacted with many famous folk there including Edward Teller when he was writing a book about nuclear weapons and deterrent. My office was right next to the printer and he had difficulty getting around, so I’d bring him his printouts. His eyesight was very bad as well so I did a bit of proofreading of his drafts for him.
I cannot say that I had long conversations with him about the US dropping the A bombs on Japan, but of course the topic did arise (it was part of the book of course). He told me that he never regretted working on developing atomic weapons (and later nuclear weapons) but he did regret not joining a group of scientists at Los Alamos who petitioned for the A bomb to be demonstrated to Japan prior to (instead of) using it. But he always maintained that the ultimate decision was made by the politicians so he didn’t think that signing the petition would have made a difference.
A few times I tried to get him to talk about Oppenheimer but he always refused.
Yeah that’s the thing I always wonder. What if we demonstrated one first in a harbor or something? I’ve heard various reasons why that wouldn’t work. But if there was a petition, then yeah - clearly it was a viable option.
But then again they didn’t surrender immediately after Hiroshima, right?
This is kind of a grunch but this post made me lol. Not sure if it’s sarcasm or not. Which is why this post is so beautiful. … is it possible the story i was told as a child just learning to love America is untrue? Hmm.
Legjt suzz not a knock on you. Don’t know where this leads. Abkit to find out!
It is formally a part of accepted American history that the two options in Japan were nuclear bombs or a mass land invasion. The simple story that is that total lives lost in a mass land invasion would have vastly exceeded the lives lost from the bombs. Like all simple narratives that reflect well on the tellers, I am sure aspects of this are somewhat dubious.
If Japan’s vow that they would fight to the last man, woman, and child were true then yeah a land battle would probably be worse for both them and America.
Why does anyone think Japan was ready to surrender when they didn‘t even surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped? Let‘s not forget how much of a death cult Imperial Japan was.
Regarding dropping the first bomb on another target to demonstrate its devastating power, at the time the US had exactly two atomic bombs and it would take considerable time to build more. Japan didn‘t even surrender after Hiroshima.
The distinction between the two atomic bombs and the rest of the campaign against Japanese civilians is basically ahistoric. From our vantage point, we see Hiroshima and Nagasaki as continuous with Cold War-era nuclear weapons, but for people at the time, they were continuous with firebombing raids. The bombs weren’t dropped because people calculated that it was the best way to compel Japan to surrender, and they weren’t dropped to send a message to the Soviets or some other nefarious reason. They were dropped because levelling Japanese cities was the US strategy at the time, and the scientists said the atomic bombs would do a better job than incendiaries.
Due to the post-war economic miracle, Japan ended up one of the richest countries in the world. I’m sure anti-American sentiment would’ve been way higher if they were a developing country now.
Also wasn’t part of the issue that after dropping one, the general thought from Japan’s side was “well it probably took all their resources to build that and they’ve shot their wad now”, and then once we dropped the second, it turned into “oh fuck they might have like 12 of these things”?
Japan stuff should probably be excised. I too was taught the “It’s either mass land invasion with massive military and civilian casualties” or “nukes” narrative. The reality was Japan’s ability to wage war outside of its home islands was decimated. They could barely fuel and man the few remaining ships and planes they had. They weren’t really a threat anymore. I’m not sure a land invasion was at all necessary to end the war. The war was effectively over.
The bombings just sped up the surrender, and kept the soviets from launching their invasion and claiming additional territory. We couldn’t let our pride take that hit. Although in a more common sense world who gives a fuck. Although maybe we did save a lot of lives with the bombings because a soviet invasion would have been brutal.
This is the trolley problem that never was. There wasn’t a plan to invade the main islands in place. it was never seriously considered by our military and political leaders. Everyone knew an invasion was unnecessary at the time. That whole argument of it would have cost 1 million American casualties didn’t see the light of day until a decade later.
OK. It sounds like you have researched it a lot more than me. Like I said earlier, it’s not unbelievable to me that the rationale was invented after the fact by the winners of the war.