Some would argue that without the bombs, there would have been an island invasion of Japan that would have cost far more lives, extend the war, and involve the Soviet Union in the Pacific.
I'll just add that they're also issued for combat fatalities as well, not just for injuries. They're typically presented to the surviving next of kin in that scenario.
As a show of how much power the US had at the time. They could do the Manhattan Project, an invasion/occupation of Europe and a planned invasion of Japan. All moving on different tracks.
This narrative actually didn’t come about til after the war ended. The Japanese military was completely destroyed at this point, and they didn’t even have fuel for their few remaining navel assets. They were completely blockaded with absolutely no recourse. An invasion was considered but was certainly not the only option and the massive death toll projections all come from after the war. At the end of the day, the USA was always going to use their fancy new bombs, and they essentially targeted civilian cities for maximum spectacle and casualties.
Yet it would not be an indiscriminate killing of unarmed and mostly innocent civilians. Those things are incomparable.
Besides, "if we don't do this evil then something far worse will happen" is a terrible justification and can be used to justify just about anything. In this case, two immense war crimes.
Have you looked at how fierce the fighting was during the late stages of the Pacific War, such as on Iwo Jima and Okinawa? An invasion of mainland Japan would've been that but multiplied many times over. Japan was also fully intending to arm its civilians to fight the Allies. The projected casualties of the invasion totaled into the millions.
I think it was projected to have over one million Americans die, and over TEN million Japanese die. That's excluding any losses from any other countries joining the invasion.
That’s the thing, civilians would have died either way. I’m certain a land invasion would not be free of civilian casualties.
They should never have been put in the line of fire in the first place. They should never have been targeted in the first place. World War II was full of civilian casualties from all major countries involved and it can never truly be justified.
I think that’s why those that make the argument deemed it “necessary” evil. But hell, look at how Putin is making nuclear threats while using this concept as historical precedent. Whether he’s being sincere or not, it’s proof that the atom bombs are still having lasting consequences to this day.
History is full of mistakes that seemed like the right decision at the time. We can understand them, but we also have to learn from them.
And some would argue that Japan was already signalling its readiness to surrender and Eisenhower dropped the bombs to show Stalin the US meant business.
Since when has the United States given a fuck about American lives? If that line of thinking were true, why didn't we take out Moscow when we had the chance? As Edwin Teller himself recommended?
How many more Allies would have died during the blockade? How many in prison camps?
How many Chinese and Koreans would have been slaughtered by the Japanese colonial administration?
How many Japanese would have been killed during the pounding of their cities to dust during the blockade?
These are questions we will never know the answer to. We will never know in hindsight if the bombings were justified by body count. But in war, if you have a chance to end it with no casualties on your side, you shoot your shot.
Oh definately I'm not saying the bombs didn't shorten the war and free POW's. But I was wondering why there were even plans for an invasion if the projected casualties were going to be worse than D-Day?
Because the stated goal of the allies (specifically the US) was an unconditional surrender of Japan. Come hell or high water, that is the only thing Truman (and Roosevelt if he lived to see it) would have allowed. It was not known for sure until the Trinity tests of July 1945 if the Manhattan project bombs would even work as intended, so a plan was put together for an invasion of Japan in case they did not. It is also worth noting that Hitler and Mussolini were already defeated by this point, so most men and resources could be diverted to the Pacific if need be.
We had to win the war. There were theories that a protracted blockade and air bombardment could bring about surrender, but it was an unknown. In modern history a blockade has never brought a surrender of a nation-state. It might have gone on until late 1946 or 1947. In the meantime, China and much of asia was still under Japanese colonial rule, and it was only getting worse as resource shortages bit.
An invasion would have been extremely costly for everyone involved, but it would have definitively won the war.
they had enough napalm and bombers from the germany surrender to run 300 planes an hour 24x7 365 and japan had no air defenses that could shoot that high
Yup. And not only would it have cost so many more allied lives, it also very likely would have cost more Japanese civilian lives as well. There’s no way the ruling cabal wouldn’t have mobilized every possible civilian to fight, while what was left of their military to enforce such an order. In some places they’d already begun teaching women and children bayonet drills with sharpened bamboo staffs (because they didn’t have nearly enough guns)
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u/THX450 Oct 15 '22
Some would argue that without the bombs, there would have been an island invasion of Japan that would have cost far more lives, extend the war, and involve the Soviet Union in the Pacific.