RE: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
Yes, you are right. "only 140k" is a rather insensitive way to put it... my apologies. Any loss of life is significant. Without belittling these horrific events further, all I was trying to point out is the A-bombs get far more credit in history than they should. Statistically, the human loss only accounted for around 7% of the total war losses estimated for Japan. I am unable to find it (now that I am looking for it) but I wrote a hard copy military strategy paper on it back in the mid-80s that has actual numbers and references (I apologize that I am working mostly from memory at the moment). The analysis was regarding the effectiveness of attacks of varying sophistication and technology in WW2 (Japan was just one the theaters reviewed). One thing that investigation did show was how much greater impact the fire bomb attacks had on the military industrial complex... not just the collateral aspects, but the critical workforce aspects needed to make it functional. Losses were much greater... 3-500k. Essentially this is the backbone of terrorist strategy today around the world (not my paper, but similar analysis by others with a more diabolical intent). Net loss is not the plan, high visibility and high psychological impact opportunities are... iconic assaults that make compelling pictures for the evening news to stampede the herd. The A-bomb attacks of WW2 fit in that category. Yes, it is very easy to sit here and type such things in a very cold, dispassionate, and unconnected way. Again, my apologies if I offend anyone. There is no compassion in statistics or strategy. -john -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 4:11 PM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima John Steck wrote: >In proper context, the atomic bombs were minor blows to the Japanese. >It was more a psychological attack. Only 140K are linked to the bombs >directly (from the event) and indirectly (from radiation poisoning). *ONLY* 140,000 people?!? Only? That's an outrageous choice of words. Furthermore, it is wrong. The damage was crippling. Two major cities were wiped out, including some of the largest factories and military bases. And the U.S. announced it would continue dropping bombs. That was no idle threat. Contrary to some of the history books from the 1960s and 70s, many more bombs were in the pipeline. The next bomb was ready in about two weeks, and a dozen more were scheduled to be "deployed" (dropped) by the end of the year. As soon as MacArthur's people found out the bomb existed, a few hours after Hiroshima, they began revising their invasion plans. They decided to drop three or four on the beaches of Shikoku just prior to the invasion. Some of the early firebomb attacks on Tokyo killed about as many people as the atomic bombs, but that was because the civilians did not know how to respond, and the government tried to keep them from fleeing. After two or three raids the fatality rate dropped from ~100,000 per attack to a few thousand. People quickly learned to get out of the way when the air raid sirens went off, an hour before the attack. Most Japanese cities were small, and an able-bodied person could flee to the surrounding mountains and rivers on foot within an hour. You cannot get out of the way of a nuclear bomb, and there could be no advanced air raid warnings. They could warn people when thousands of airplanes were approaching, but nuclear bombs were dropped by groups of three airplanes, and such small groups were coming over Japan in many places every day for one purpose or another (mainly surveillance and mapping). When the bombing began millions of people defied government orders and fled to the countryside, abandoning their houses, possessions, and jobs. This brought production to a halt, which was the whole idea of the bombing. The U.S. encouraged this by dropping leaflets warning people to leave. The Japanese government discouraged it by cutting off people's rations when they left their assigned jobs, and by torturing and beating people to death. Much of the population of Hiroshima had evacuated, fortunately. In my opinion, the conventional and nuclear bombs, and the property damage they wrought, was entirely the moral responsibility of the United States. I do not see how anyone can argue with that. It was possible to carry out war without direct attacks on civilians, by confining attacks to military targets and by blockading. When the conventional bombing attacks began, many prominent Americans, including some prominent military leaders, decried them as morally wrong and ineffective. It is difficult to judge whether they were necessary and effective. While I have no doubt the U.S. was morally responsible for the damage, the fact that these attacks killed civilians was entirely the fault of the Japanese government. Since
RE: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
John Steck wrote: In proper context, the atomic bombs were minor blows to the Japanese. It was more a psychological attack. Only 140K are linked to the bombs directly (from the event) and indirectly (from radiation poisoning). *ONLY* 140,000 people?!? Only? That's an outrageous choice of words. Furthermore, it is wrong. The damage was crippling. Two major cities were wiped out, including some of the largest factories and military bases. And the U.S. announced it would continue dropping bombs. That was no idle threat. Contrary to some of the history books from the 1960s and 70s, many more bombs were in the pipeline. The next bomb was ready in about two weeks, and a dozen more were scheduled to be "deployed" (dropped) by the end of the year. As soon as MacArthur's people found out the bomb existed, a few hours after Hiroshima, they began revising their invasion plans. They decided to drop three or four on the beaches of Shikoku just prior to the invasion. Some of the early firebomb attacks on Tokyo killed about as many people as the atomic bombs, but that was because the civilians did not know how to respond, and the government tried to keep them from fleeing. After two or three raids the fatality rate dropped from ~100,000 per attack to a few thousand. People quickly learned to get out of the way when the air raid sirens went off, an hour before the attack. Most Japanese cities were small, and an able-bodied person could flee to the surrounding mountains and rivers on foot within an hour. You cannot get out of the way of a nuclear bomb, and there could be no advanced air raid warnings. They could warn people when thousands of airplanes were approaching, but nuclear bombs were dropped by groups of three airplanes, and such small groups were coming over Japan in many places every day for one purpose or another (mainly surveillance and mapping). When the bombing began millions of people defied government orders and fled to the countryside, abandoning their houses, possessions, and jobs. This brought production to a halt, which was the whole idea of the bombing. The U.S. encouraged this by dropping leaflets warning people to leave. The Japanese government discouraged it by cutting off people's rations when they left their assigned jobs, and by torturing and beating people to death. Much of the population of Hiroshima had evacuated, fortunately. In my opinion, the conventional and nuclear bombs, and the property damage they wrought, was entirely the moral responsibility of the United States. I do not see how anyone can argue with that. It was possible to carry out war without direct attacks on civilians, by confining attacks to military targets and by blockading. When the conventional bombing attacks began, many prominent Americans, including some prominent military leaders, decried them as morally wrong and ineffective. It is difficult to judge whether they were necessary and effective. While I have no doubt the U.S. was morally responsible for the damage, the fact that these attacks killed civilians was entirely the fault of the Japanese government. Since the Japanese government could do nothing to prevent the attacks, it should have made every effort to evacuate the people. In England and Germany the governments organized evacuations and the casualty rate was lower. Full Disclosure: Some of my future relatives and in-laws were killed or wounded in Hiroshima, including one who was a soldier in the Hiroshima army base. (Contrary to some antiwar revisionist history, this military base was huge, and it was smack in the middle of the city.) Other relatives were on the American side and probably would have been killed in the invasion. - Jed
RE: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
In proper context, the atomic bombs were minor blows to the Japanese. It was more a psychological attack. Only 140K are linked to the bombs directly (from the event) and indirectly (from radiation poisoning). The firebombing raids did more significant damage and loss of life... 3x-5x more deaths and square miles of destruction attributed to those attacks. Those raids specifically targeted the close packed wooden structures of the civilian population. -john -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, August 08, 2005 11:06 AM To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima Harry Veeder wrote: >it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the >Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs >"caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a >definite military target." Hiroshima had some of largest army and navy installations in Japan. Nagasaki was and still is one of the largest shipyards in the world. The supertankers I saw under construction there dwarfed the whole downtown area. They built the superbattleship Musashi there, and recently they have constructed gigantic cruiseships, as well as wind turbines and solar cells. >Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate >surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the >Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. Nothing in history a straightforward. >As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing >the >Enemy" - and many other historians have long argued - it was the Soviet >Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima >bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation. That is unquestionably true. Every surviving account of the emperor's counsel emphasizes that the Russian attack was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, whether that alone would have been sufficient, and whether they would have surrendered without the nuclear attacks is impossible to know. The final cabinet vote was a tie -- all of the civilians in favor of surrender, all of the military leaders against it. The emperor broke the tie, voting himself for the first and last time in Japanese history. My guess is that there would have been at least one or two more large battles: one in Kyushu against the US, and one in Hokkaido or Tohoku against the Russians. The Japanese still had a million trained soldiers and ungodly amounts of ammunition and fortified bunkers in Kyushu that would have survived a nuclear attack. (Everyone could see that is where the attack would come.) >The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese >cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed. That is ridiculous. They dropped leaflets continuously, starting in the fall of 1944. It was one of the most effective weapons of the U.S., since the purpose of the bombing was to frighten the civilians and get them to leave the cities and stop weapons production. It worked. >The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million >lives were not saved. No one can possibly say how many lives were saved. If the war had dragged on another six months, hundreds of thousands would have starved to death. (Several thousand people starved to death after the surrender, including ~20,000 Japanese P.O.W.s in Southeast Asia, who were half dead when they surrendered.) The invading Russians would have killed hundreds of thousands more, as they did in Manchuria. >The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of >the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially >defeated enemy." No one disputes that. The problem was, even though they were defeated they did not want to stop fighting. Roughly 2 million Japanese people had been killed, or 3% of the population. But they might have fought on and lost another 7 million people (10% of the population). During WWII, Germany lost 7 million people (9%) and Russia lost 25.5 million (13%). In the U.S. Civil War, the Union states lost 1.4% of the population and the Confederacy lost 2.5%. There have been wars in modern history in Central America in which half the male population was killed off, and medieval European wars which depopulated entire fiefdoms. >And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves >as >they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese >were looking for peace. They could hardly disagree about that! The Japanese government was sending them cables asking for peace, and they were tapping and decoding the Japanese ambassador's correspondence from Moscow to Tokyo. The only
Re: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
I knew someone and Aussy POW in Japan when the bomb dropped. He was a bit of a historian. He said that there were conflicts between pro-emporer and pro- Tojo diplomats and security officers. The generals knew they faced the noose with any kind of surrender. Those sending peace messages on the emporers side where under virtual house arrest with the phones tapped. When the bombs dropped key people on Tojo's side quietly switched sides. Phone lines became available to the pro-peace diplomats, the guard commander at the palace gate went off to see if his family was OK, the generals orders were acted on but very slowly. A docudrama move made recently explored the tale. Have you seen anything to prove this tale to be untrue? Jed Rothwell wrote: Harry Veeder wrote: it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target." Hiroshima had some of largest army and navy installations in Japan. Nagasaki was and still is one of the largest shipyards in the world. The supertankers I saw under construction there dwarfed the whole downtown area. They built the superbattleship Musashi there, and recently they have constructed gigantic cruiseships, as well as wind turbines and solar cells. Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. Nothing in history a straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" — and many other historians have long argued — it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation. That is unquestionably true. Every surviving account of the emperor's counsel emphasizes that the Russian attack was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, whether that alone would have been sufficient, and whether they would have surrendered without the nuclear attacks is impossible to know. The final cabinet vote was a tie -- all of the civilians in favor of surrender, all of the military leaders against it. The emperor broke the tie, voting himself for the first and last time in Japanese history. My guess is that there would have been at least one or two more large battles: one in Kyushu against the US, and one in Hokkaido or Tohoku against the Russians. The Japanese still had a million trained soldiers and ungodly amounts of ammunition and fortified bunkers in Kyushu that would have survived a nuclear attack. (Everyone could see that is where the attack would come.) The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed. That is ridiculous. They dropped leaflets continuously, starting in the fall of 1944. It was one of the most effective weapons of the U.S., since the purpose of the bombing was to frighten the civilians and get them to leave the cities and stop weapons production. It worked. The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. No one can possibly say how many lives were saved. If the war had dragged on another six months, hundreds of thousands would have starved to death. (Several thousand people starved to death after the surrender, including ~20,000 Japanese P.O.W.s in Southeast Asia, who were half dead when they surrendered.) The invading Russians would have killed hundreds of thousands more, as they did in Manchuria. The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." No one disputes that. The problem was, even though they were defeated they did not want to stop fighting. Roughly 2 million Japanese people had been killed, or 3% of the population. But they might have fought on and lost another 7 million people (10% of the population). During WWII, Germany lost 7 million people (9%) and Russia lost 25.5 million (13%). In the U.S. Civil War, the Union states lost 1.4% of the population and the Confederacy lost 2.5%. There have been wars in modern history in Central America in which half the male population was killed off, and medieval European wars which depopulated entire fiefdoms. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace. They could hardly disagree about that! The Japanese government was sending them cables asking for peace, and they were tapping and decoding the Japanese ambassador's correspondence from Moscow to Tokyo. The only issue was the terms of the peace. The Japan
Re: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
Harry Veeder wrote: it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target." Hiroshima had some of largest army and navy installations in Japan. Nagasaki was and still is one of the largest shipyards in the world. The supertankers I saw under construction there dwarfed the whole downtown area. They built the superbattleship Musashi there, and recently they have constructed gigantic cruiseships, as well as wind turbines and solar cells. Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. Nothing in history a straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" and many other historians have long argued it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation. That is unquestionably true. Every surviving account of the emperor's counsel emphasizes that the Russian attack was the straw that broke the camel's back. However, whether that alone would have been sufficient, and whether they would have surrendered without the nuclear attacks is impossible to know. The final cabinet vote was a tie -- all of the civilians in favor of surrender, all of the military leaders against it. The emperor broke the tie, voting himself for the first and last time in Japanese history. My guess is that there would have been at least one or two more large battles: one in Kyushu against the US, and one in Hokkaido or Tohoku against the Russians. The Japanese still had a million trained soldiers and ungodly amounts of ammunition and fortified bunkers in Kyushu that would have survived a nuclear attack. (Everyone could see that is where the attack would come.) The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed. That is ridiculous. They dropped leaflets continuously, starting in the fall of 1944. It was one of the most effective weapons of the U.S., since the purpose of the bombing was to frighten the civilians and get them to leave the cities and stop weapons production. It worked. The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. No one can possibly say how many lives were saved. If the war had dragged on another six months, hundreds of thousands would have starved to death. (Several thousand people starved to death after the surrender, including ~20,000 Japanese P.O.W.s in Southeast Asia, who were half dead when they surrendered.) The invading Russians would have killed hundreds of thousands more, as they did in Manchuria. The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." No one disputes that. The problem was, even though they were defeated they did not want to stop fighting. Roughly 2 million Japanese people had been killed, or 3% of the population. But they might have fought on and lost another 7 million people (10% of the population). During WWII, Germany lost 7 million people (9%) and Russia lost 25.5 million (13%). In the U.S. Civil War, the Union states lost 1.4% of the population and the Confederacy lost 2.5%. There have been wars in modern history in Central America in which half the male population was killed off, and medieval European wars which depopulated entire fiefdoms. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace. They could hardly disagree about that! The Japanese government was sending them cables asking for peace, and they were tapping and decoding the Japanese ambassador's correspondence from Moscow to Tokyo. The only issue was the terms of the peace. The Japanese did not want to surrender their colonies, allow an occupation, war crimes trials, any change in the status of the emperor, or any changes to their constitution or government. (They were willing to surrender their military forces and leave China.) Within days after the bombing, many columnists and opinion makers began to speculate that the real reason the US dropped the bomb was to send a message to Moscow. I have read many of Truman's papers, biographies and the books that he himself wrote and I have not found a one sentence to back this up. Truman described his motivations and actions in detail. If he had felt this way he would have said so. He was a hard-line cold warrior. He did not hesitate to go to war in Korea. There is no question he was willing
Re: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
>The myths of Hiroshima > >By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin > >08/05/05 Los Angeles Times > >The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives >were not saved. >KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are coauthors of "American Prometheus: The > This speculation is revisionist history at it's trashy worst. It is impossible to prove a negative. What is certain is that the Japanese people were prepared to stand behind their government which had a history of encouraging a fight to the death, verses surrender. It is also certain that an American president who had allowed an invasion to go forward with the resulting bloodbath, while sitting on several atom bombs, would have been turned out to pasture at the next election. Ditto for having prolonged the suffering of our prisoners. It is also a fact that the L A Slimes is losing subscribers, big time. Last spring they published as news the propaganda given to one of their reporters who uncritically published the comments of a North Korean "businessman." Now there's an oxymoron. This prompted Hugh Hewitt, www.hughhewitt.com to cancel his subscription and encourage everyone listening to his show do likewise.
Re: [OT] The myths of Hiroshima
> From: Harry Veeder > it was the Soviet Union's entry into the > Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided > the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation. This was likely one of the reasons for the bombs being dropped. It delivered a message to the Soviet Union.
[OT] The myths of Hiroshima
The myths of Hiroshima By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin 08/05/05 Los Angeles Times -- SIXTY YEARS ago, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate. The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 just five days after the Nagasaki bombing Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan. This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war. But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target." Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" and many other historians have long argued it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation. The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed. The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace. These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished. Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons? Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival. Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national nightmare and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New York." Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly shock us into retreating from the Mideast. Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance. Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of
