Actually, the purpose of the bomb was to save many thousands more lives than it ended. An invasion of Japan would've cost an enormous number of lives. It would've also had a catastrophic effect on the civilian population, because they were being told that the American troops were there to enslave them. It has even been said that the propaganda being told to the Japanese civilians included the idea that the troops would kill and cannibalize their families. I'm not sure whether that latter part is true, but what is true is that the civilians were extremely incentivized to be as hostile as possible to any American invasion army, even to the extent of whole families committing suicide out of fear of being enslaved or tortured, as on Okinawa.
Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population.
Human affairs are sometimes terrible, but they often take the least terrible path out of all terrible paths. This is evidenced by the fact that the cuban missile crisis didn't result in an all-out nuclear war, and also that these bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than Americans invading Japan, which would have been far more devastating.
Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high. Depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties.
I upvoted you because I agree that everyone should be terrified at the prospect of war, because war only happens when people aren't terrified of it.
While there are many people who subscribe to your view, there are an equal number who believe that Japan would have surrendered within months/weeks with no ground invasion.
The allies had complete air and naval superiority and Russia had joined the the Japanese war theatre.
If you have read the ethics of atomic bombings in any detail you are already aware of the details, so I would refrain from linking to wikipedia. To push your POV that the bombing was entirely necessary and entirely morally right is immoral.
I'm not aware of the ethical details, so feel free to correct me. It's my understanding that invasion was imminent at the time of the bombings, so America's choice was either to send bombs or soldiers. If that was truly their choice, it seems hard to argue that the bomb was the less ethical.
It's fine to say that Japan would have surrendered without invasion, but such a strong assertion needs to be backed by equally strong evidence.
EDIT: An excerpt from your link:
This conclusion assumed conventional fire bombing would have continued, with ever-increasing numbers of B-29s, and a greater level of destruction to Japan's cities and population.
It seems hard to argue that literally firebombing an entire civilization into stoneage living conditions was more ethical than forcing a quick political decision to surrender and stop the madness. Can you imagine trying to live without basic necessities? Even if nobody was dropping bombs on you directly, you, your family, and everyone around you would be the definition of misery for the duration of the firebombing. The firebombing didn't simply destroy military targets. It also decimated infrastructure that we take for granted, such as the ability to deliver drinkable water, or to seek medical treatment at hospitals. How many were to die a miserable death due to the firebombing before Hiroshima and Nagasaki could objectively be called the more ethical decision?
Also, the above analysis assumes both sides had perfect information. But information during wartime is asymmetric. It's entirely possible that America had no knowledge of the Japanese political framework at the time the decision to drop the bombs was made. If the Japanese were broadcasting their intention to surrender before the bombs were dropped, that would be different, but it doesn't seem like that was the case.
Would you mind helping me understand why firebombing was more ethical than the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
> It's fine to say that Japan would have surrendered without invasion, but such a strong assertion needs to be backed by equally strong evidence.
This was shown by post-war inquiries. Japan had already offered a complete surrender, contingent only on preserving the emperor. They had been trying to surrender since April, according to documents leaked by the president's Chief of Staff, on roughly the same terms that the Americans ultimately accepted.
The rush to drop the bombs was that the Soviet Union had promised to join the war against Japan on August 10, giving the Western allies only a few days to make sure that they would be the ones occupying Japan, not the Soviets.
A cynic might also suspect a bit of enthusiasm among U.S. military to field test the power of their new weapon.
I don't see a whole lot of point to discussing what we think Japan would have done, given the information that we have now. I have seen some of the research suggesting that Japan was more concerned about Russia's declaration of war than the atomic bombings, and might have surrendered based on that alone. But that research is based on a bunch of historians with unlimited access to Japanese records of high-level meetings and conversations, and all the time in the world to research, correlate, and discuss things.
They may well be right, but American Military officers making decisions couldn't possibly know any of that. All they can know is what the Japanese government has said and done, and anything that their intelligence sources can pick up, which may or may not be believable. Everything they would have seen up to that point says that Japan is ruthless and determined to not surrender, and they can only be convinced otherwise if it's clear that they face total destruction otherwise. I can't see how any information available to them points to any other conclusion than that the bomb should be dropped as soon as it's ready to bring an end to the war as quickly as possible.
It's immoral to state one's opinion? If he truly believes that the bombing was the best outcome, how was that immoral?
Note that even with the bombing and the Soviet intervention, there was a military coup aimed at preventing the surrender that very nearly succeeded. The contingent of the Japanese government that felt it was better to be obliterated than to surrender was large and powerful.
One could certainly argue that they would be overcome as the realities of the situation set in, but one could also argue that they wouldn't.
It is, as you say, debatable. Which makes it odd that you just dismiss the other side so readily.
I believe the parent was relating what was believed at the time, not what is common knowledge today. I'm not sure he's pushing his views on anyone, but more relating what the view at the time was. Careful of cognitive dissonance here - what once once was isn't necessarily what is today.
I apologize if it sounded like I was pushing my opinion on anyone. It wasn't my intent. I'm only here to learn, so I genuinely hope people will correct me when I'm wrong.
The purpose of the nuclear bomb was the same as the purpose of strategic bombing in general - to destroy buildings and infrastructure and kill people indiscriminately. The nuclear bomb was not fundamentally different in that aspect - strategic bombings had been going on for years and was highly destructive and deadly already. For example the firebombing of Tokyo with conventional bombs killed more people than the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. So the use of nuclear bomb did not require any special explanation or justification. It was natural extension of the strategy in use.
Of course it can be said that the purpose of the use of any weapon is to win and thereby end the was sooner, hence saving lives in the long run. In that case the purpose of any bomb, tank, landmine or gun is to save lives.
One can entertain the idea that the eventual outcome was ultimately better for all parties than the alternatives (though it's far from clear that's the case when the alternatives included "not playing hardball over unconditional surrender" and the scientists' favoured alternative of "demonstrate the bomb in a relatively benign manner") but the minutes of the meetings that made the decision quite explicitly discuss relative merits of targets in terms of the anticipated destructive effect on civilians, speaking favourably about wiping out Kyoto because of its high concentration of intellectuals before ultimately choosing Hiroshima over more obvious military targets because it "has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focusing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed" (and not really being militarily significant, it was largely undamaged). The notion that the surviving Japanese might ultimately be better off doesn't seem to have featured so highly in the decision-making calculus.
It's not like the country would have meekly gone home to lick its wounds, had the nasty Americans only left them alone. Remember the war started because of Japan's imperialistic dreams in SE Asia.
You might have visions of the U.S. systematically destroying any Japanese war power that ventured out for conquest while leaving the home islands untouched, but that kind of shepherding requires a degree of total military superiority we did not posses at the time.
You should look into the history of the relationship between e.g. Japan and Korea or Japan and China and see if anything interesting happened during the late 1930s or early 1940s. It might be the case that there were concerns other than simply "Will Japan attack the mainland".
This was the moment at which the Bushido Code really did the Japanese no favors. The island hopping campaign had been brutal. It did not take a great deal of imagination to make an assault on the Home Islands daunting.
Things I've read indicate that there was an actual lack of trusted comms between the Imperial staff and the U.S. I believe things were going through the Soviets. Some credit that with leaving enough gap to make any offer of surrender much slower and harder to verify. And there was allegedly a power struggle within the Imperial chain of command.
You have to look at these things in the context of the war that had been going on for years at the time. Imperial Japan had attacked, invaded, and occupied any neighbors who had resources they might need or who otherwise might oppose them. That occupation often came with brutality and oppression at a scale that would make the Nazis blush.
When the US entered the war, one of their first moves was unrestricted submarine warfare, meaning any Japanese ship is sunk on sight, regardless of who or what is onboard or where it is heading. It continued with sinking many naval fleets, re-invading many islands, generally resulting in the death of basically everyone in the Japanese garrison, as it was part of their code to kill themselves or carry out suicide attacks rather than surrender.
Continuing on, we have the unrestricted aerial bombing of basically every city in Japan. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively untouched so late in the war was that they were exempted from conventional bombing for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the atomic bombs when they were ready. Many of the conventional bombing raids caused greater death and destruction than the atomic bombings.
In light of all of this, suggesting a demonstration of the bomb seems kinda pointless. The Imperial Japanese administration would probably interpret such an act as saying that America didn't have the courage to carry out major attacks, thus encouraging them to hold out longer and requiring more destruction in the end to force a surrender. The bombings were terrible, but the real suffering was the war itself, and the only way to stop it was to force the surrender of Imperial Japan as quickly as possible. Against such an enemy, the best way to end the war with as much of Japanese society as possible still intact was to demonstrate total ruthlessness in doing anything in our power to destroy Japanese infrastructure and kill Japanese citizens as quickly as possible.
> It strikes me as pure evil that the very first use of nuclear energy was to drop a massive bomb over a bunch of fellow humans.
Atomic weapons are a natural evolutionary step up from conventional explosives, which are a natural evolutionary step up from clubs and rocks. All this talk about atomic weapons being qualitatively different (as opposed to quantitatively different) is mostly hyperbole, with one exception -- only wealthy industrial powers can create them ... so far.
> Surely the force of nuclear weapons could have been demonstrated without actually dropping it on a concentration of living, healthy people.
The people in charge decided that a demonstration wouldn't stop the war or the need to use the new weapons, and later events proved them right. Contrary to what many Americans believe, the Japanese didn't surrender because of the atomic bombings, but because Russia invaded Manchuria, a development the Japanese saw as much more dangerous than atomic bombs.
>The people in charge decided that a demonstration wouldn't stop the war or the need to use the new weapons, and later events proved them right. Contrary to what many Americans believe, the Japanese didn't surrender because of the atomic bombings, but because Russia invaded Manchuria, a development the Japanese saw as much more dangerous than atomic bombs.
If that is the case, then that proves they were dead wrong about their justification for the necessity of dropping those bombs in the first place. Why tell everyone "we need to bomb" in order for Japan to surrender when you knew it wouldn't stop the war?
> Why tell everyone "we need to bomb" in order for Japan to surrender when you knew it wouldn't stop the war?
For various political reasons (I'm not justifying this, only explaining it). The Manhattan Project began in response to the perceived threat that Germany might create an atomic weapon. In 1945, with Germany out of the picture, and with no alternative, people began to talk about using it against Japan. It was realized that, if we didn't force Japan to surrender to us, they would surrender to the Russians, with unimaginable postwar consequences.
Again, I'm only explaining the thinking of the time, not justifying it.
After the war, it was discovered that Germany was nowhere near creating an atomic bomb, but it came out that Japan was actively pursuing this class of weapon and was technically farther ahead, lacking only the raw materials. In the closing days of the war, a German submarine was intercepted trying to deliver uranium to Japan for use in a nuclear weapon they planned to build and use against the U.S. :
