Ok so Col Tibbets of Enola Gay fame has gone to that great Super Fortress in the sky. But?

Question

as some of you seem to be roundly condemning the guy for being the first person to drop the A bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, I take it that you would have ended the war differently. So allowing for the fact that hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers lives were at stake, How would you have ended the war with Japan without the use of the Atomic Bomb???

Answer 1

The war cabinet was arguing to the emperor that the war should continue until the Allies had grown so tired of fighting that they would be willing to abandon the policy of unconditional surrender and negotiate with the Japanese government.

Indeed, Gen Anami Korechika, the chief of the Army staff, went so far as to argue that the Americans could only have one such bomb available to them after the destruction of Hiroshima. (When the officer who'd sent to there to observe and report on the destruction reported back, Anami encouraged him to play up the parts of the city that had survived the attack--including the underground factories and munitions bunkers--in his report to the emperor, as a means of bolstering the 'we can fight on' faction.

[Ironically, BG Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan project, had directed his people to produce at least two weapons earler that year specifically because once it became clear the weapon would work, he feared that someone in the Japanese military would try to make the "they can't have any more than that" argument to the emperor.]

So what were the stakes without using the Bomb? The Army Chemical Corps had stockpiled large amounts of the so-called 'war gasses' (mustard, nerve agents, chlorine, etc) in its arsenal. Additionally, US Army Medical Department and Services of Supply records make it clear that they were planning for a minimum of 350,000 casualties among the US troops alone in the invasion forces. Finally, as part of the actual invasion plans, the USAAF would be employed to make at least 9 atomic strikes as part of the landings on the home islands.

For their part, the Imperial Army was training civilians to make suicidal charges with bamboo spears at the invaders. Thousands of Army and Navy aircraft and the fuel for them were being hoarded for kamikaze attacks on the invasion force as it debarked its troops. Propaganda had prepared many noncombatants to be thrown into the fighting to bolster the fighting troops. Every landing would have been opposed, and, as we found out after the surrender, there wasn't a single potential invasion beach that wasn't heavily defended. The Japanese would have gone down fighting, and their intent was to take as many Allied invaders with them as humanly possible. The most conservative overall estimates of the casualty count remains in the 1.5 million (on both sides) range; all the estimates were based on the campaigns of the previous year's fighting, where Imperial forces contested every inch of land more or less to the last man (and often the last woman and child, toward the end).

President Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb was neither quickly nor lightly made. As terrible as it was, it was the least terrible action that could have been taken at the time.

Answer 2

Since the question is what other way to end the war without the use of the a-bomb, I would suggest that the strategy would be to overrun their country as we did Germany, except we would have to deploy the methods that the Red Army used.
People whine about the civilian losses from the bomb, but the people of Japan appeared to have supported the war machine that their country built. So, again Use the tactics of the Russians on the Eastern front. Burnt earth warfare. Kill and destroy every creature and piece of equipment or property that would be useful to the enemy should they turn your attack.
Use of this tactic would multiply the loss of enemy life, including or should I say especially the civilian population. An occupied citizenry did not fair well under this type of warfare, but it was much worse on the populous of the enemy country.
With that description I would estimate the civilian population loss in Japan from an invasion by the Allied forces would be 10 to 15 times the loss suffered in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Is this the answer you were wanting? Is this the outcome you would have expected? Including the loss of Allied soldiers lives in such a massive assault would you even be alive today?

Answer 3

Obviously, Liane doesn't know the first thing about this.

The answer is that there was nothing else to do, and the very idea that we would have hesitiated to use that weapon at the time is just absurd. We dropped the first one and the Japanese still didn't unconditionally surrender. So we dropped another one. It's just that simple. No remorse and no regrets.

Civilian deaths? Who cares? That's what modern war is about. You have any idea how many people we killed in conventional firebombing attacks over Tokyo? A hell of a lot more than those puny atomic bombs did. Then again, how many Japanese would we have killed had we actually had to invade the home islands? Hundreds of thousands at least. How many hundreds of thousands of lives would that have cost us? Estimates at the time were as high as half a million just to capture the southern island.

Screw diplomacy. We were at war and the only solution was unconditional surrender. Period.

I have zero patience with anyone who criticizes us for dropping those weapons. Had I been there, I would have gladly done so myself.

I realize that I'm sounding a bit strident here, but boy, do I ever get tired of politically correct claptrap peddled by pampered baby boomers and their progeny who will never know what the buisiness of total war is about and who will never have a clue about what their grandparents went through.

Answer 4

Pap,
I agree with Terry T, Imperialistic (guy above), and Psyop6. I have read the history on what the alternatives were if "NOT" using the bomb. This war in my view would have lasted until 1948 in the Pacific - the collateral damage would have been much worse than it was and to boot there were thousands upon thousands of caches of ammunition and weapons discovered and/or revealed following the successful surrender of the Japanese.

Both the allies and what was then left of the axis powers got off pretty easily with the advent and use of the A bomb. Unfortunately, there are many people since born after WWII who fail to see the true reason for the use of the bomb and how many lives were saved by actually employing it. My goal in this response was not to repeat the knowledge of the history that you and others have - but to express my opinion on this matter.

Thank you for your service to our country and thank you for this question....star is now coming your way. And I am prepared for the "thumbs down" but this is my take on your question and my sincere response.

Gerry

Answer 5

there ae some excellent answers here..it's good to know at least 4 people have studied history and not given into liberal guilt and political correctness.

Let me just add that : in lieu of A-bombs, we would have continued the mass B-29 firebombing campaign. How many people know that more Japanese were killed and more damage done to Tokyo in April of 45 than in the strikes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Answer 6

Its a difficult won to call , but the the bomb was probably the lesser of two evils , the japs would have fought on the last man and there brutal treatment of people invaded or captured could have taught the germans a thing or to , in light of this old Truman and his generals weren't about to take any more chances.

Answer 7

I think he liked girls with attitude. Because apparently Debbie Rowe what we've seen of her she's kind of a hag, and Lisa Marie seemed to have this eff off look to her all the time, and even though he wasn't "with" tatiana, she seemed a little off. And not all his women were tall, Lisa Marie is fairly short [5'2]. I think he just loves all women??

Answer 8

so it's okay that they also bombed Nagasaki? despite the fact that thousands of innocent people were wiped out in a matter of seconds and the effects are still being felt today because of the radiation, that's okay is it? I'm not condoning the fact that allied soldiers lives were at stake but surely there could have been a more diplomatic sollution rather than doing what the american government do best.

Answer 9

We could have dropped John Rambo from a B-29.

Answer 10

By dropping hundreds of thousands of Slim Pickens' on them.

YEEEHAWW!