Will a Nuclear Weapon of Mass Destruction Be Used This Decade?

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Kasz216 said:

Horhito contacted Roosevelt... and was ignored because what he wasn't offering was unconditional surrender. Which was what was required.

Japan was willing to surrender, so long as they got to keep some of the lands they conquered.

Additionally, when he eventually DID surrender, he was almost ambushed by the council and separated from the people.

Your right about the supplies... but wrong about the casualties.

Such large numbers were predicted, not so much because the soldiers and families would fight tooth and nail. (Though there was a decent amount of that)

More so because their upper military echelon refused to be removed from power and would of did anything to keep power, and because the Japanese people were facing immanent starvation and didn't really have the cultural ability to raise up at the time.


Many millions of people were saved only because Japan was forced to surrender and the US came in quick and set up food distribution networks ASAP.

Many many people still starved.

A long protracted isolation campaign waiting for the elites to be touched by the blockade would of been catastrophic and starved tons of people, 20 million not being outlandish when you consider Japanese food supplies were centralized and largely relied on the same methods of transportation that were used for military materials, aka places that would of been bombed.

 

He's wrong on some of the facts, but right on the actual conclusion, that of the three options avaliable... the Atomic bomb was by far the one that cost the least amount of civilian deaths, and ended with japan in the best shape post war.

Haha, thanks for the reasonable reply.

I still don't buy that the atom bomb was the best way out though, the only positive impact it had was intimidation.

Further negotiation could have led to Japan's surrender without the bombs, I am not sure what different terms there were between the treaty Hirohito offered Roosevelt and the one that was agreed on after the bombings, I heard they were very similar. If Roosevelt had just accepted the treaty the first time round then it probably would have been the best case scenario. As long as the land they wanted to keep wasn't on mainland China then Roosevelt should have accepted and that would have saved many more lives.

I can understand that the atomic bombs ended the war quickly, but what makes me feel disgusted is people SUPPORT the bombings and they like to think it was the only way out, it wasn't.

Hirohito's word was final, and he had already considered surrendering when his country was better off just 6 months ago, this is the proof that the atomic bombs were not necessary.

Truman opted out of hard negotion and opted in on mass murder, when he dropped the atomic bombs, he forced Japan into surrendering and at the same time won the biggest dick-waving contest of all time, intimidating other countries. The fact that the US dropped the bombs so recklessly must have left the Soviets feeling pretty paranoid, we are lucky nothing came of the Cold War.

It isn't so much the death tolls that bother me, but it's how these people were killed, and how recklessly they were targetted.