70 years since atomic bombing of Hirosima

Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:

No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.

If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

**A Town Called Malus**

ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it? There is no doubt they would have used it on us so just because we developed it and used it before them makes us the bad people?

What's your point?

"I shot him because if he'd had a gun he would've shot me!" is not going to get you out of a murder charge in any court in the developed world.

**Kanluwen**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it? There is no doubt they would have used it on us so just because we developed it and used it before them makes us the bad people?

What's your point?

"I shot him because if he'd had a gun he would've shot me!" is not going to get you out of a murder charge in any court in the developed world.

But we're not talking about murder charges, and we're not talking about courts.

It was a war. Don't like it? Too bad.

**Frazzled**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it? There is no doubt they would have used it on us so just because we developed it and used it before them makes us the bad people?

What's your point?

"I shot him because if he'd had a gun he would've shot me!" is not going to get you out of a murder charge in any court in the developed world.

To be more appropriate that would be "I shot him because he had a knife and he was stabbing that family with it."

**Freakazoitt**

So you think, using nuclear weapons in the future is ok, if there will be some "good" reason?

**Daston**

It was a means to an end, one that probably did save more lives than it killed.

A lot of gak went on over those 6 years on all sides of the war and the atomic bombs were just the crown of all that stuff.

One question you have to ask is "would you have surrendered?"

Britain was prepairing for eminent German invasion alone (something the US never really had to face), would we have given up had the RAF fallen? Or the Royal Navy Sunk? there was a very high level of Moral and the Germans would have paid a heavy price for an assault and probably a lot of resistance as well.

Same could be said for the US, would they have rolled over had Japan put the heat on following Pearl Harbor, what if they had started carpet bombing the west coast and landing troops?

We can speculate but we just don't know how it would have panned out. The chaps who had to make the choice dropping the bombs also didn't know. For all they knew every civilian could have rised up against the invading forces or acted as suicide bombers (something they had seen on the islands).

So lest us not argue about who killed who but let us make sure that it never has to be an option again.

**womprat49**

My gramps was in the Pacific on the USS Washington battleship, I bet with all the home island kamikaze ready to go and the civilian population ready for complete war like the Hitler Youth I'm sure a few hundred thousand of our grandparents wouldn't have made it back home for the baby-boom of the 1940-50's. If the US invaded Japan home islands many of our parents wouldn't have been born.

**SagesStone**

womprat49 wrote:
My gramps was in the Pacific on the USS Washington battleship, I bet with all the home island kamikaze ready to go and the civilian population ready for complete war like the Hitler Youth I'm sure a few hundred thousand of our grandparents wouldn't have made it back home for the baby-boom of the 1940-50's. If the US invaded Japan home islands many of our parents wouldn't have been born.

The civilians didn't really want the war. They were hiding in fear daily from the air raid sirens, really getting caught up in it like citizens usually do in things like dictatorships.

**whembly**

Oh... let's drop the whole "we have enough nukes to destroy the human race" trope shall we?

Not saying that all those nukes won't cause major problems (nuke winter, radiation poisoning, etc...)... but, we'd stick around. Like cockroaches.

I'm glad we used the nukes to force Japan to surrender.

It. Ended. The. War.

Further analysis on whether it's wrong, or we could've achieved victory in other manner is simply engaging in "Monday Morning Quarterbacking".

Perspective folks... for many of us, this monday morning quarterbacking is a luxury as there's no telling that some of us would be here now, as our ancestors could've died in the eventual land invasion.

**Tannhauser42**

Sure we'd stick around like cockroaches. Plus, thanks to the radiation, we'd probably have antennae just like them or something else.

**whembly**

Tannhauser42 wrote:
Sure we'd stick around like cockroaches. Plus, thanks to the radiation, we'd probably have antennae just like them or something else.

Of course... I've played Fallout 4!

**Kilkrazy**

ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it? There is no doubt they would have used it on us so just because we developed it and used it before them makes us the bad people?

This is a very hypothetical argument.

Japan didn't have the atom bomb, didn't have a programme to make one, and didn't have a means of delivering it to the mainland USA if they had. Creating the atom bomb was not only expensive, it required a multi-national team of dozens of scientists from Europe and America.

You might as well say that since Japan might have used space lasers or mind control to attack the USA, the atom bomb was justified.

To have dropped the bomb doesn't necessarily make the USA "the bad people" but equally it doesn't make the USA "the good people" and anyway, if you look at the world in a realistic way, there are shades of grey.

**Ahtman**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Japan might have used space lasers

Are you implying Japan doesn't have space lasers?

**Kilkrazy**

They do now but not in 1940.

**Jihadin**

Whew
Good thing we took out Germany first
They were more advance...NVG's, guided missiles, jet power fighter/bombers....

**A Town Called Malus**

Jihadin wrote:
Whew
Good thing we took out Germany first
They were more advance...NVG's, guided missiles, jet power fighter/bombers....

Indeed but their atomic program suffered from many of the top scientists finding the Nazi ideology abhorrent and leaving Europe.

Then there was the Allied operations to disrupt it, such as the raids on the heavy water plants in Norway.

The mainland USA, on the other hand, was the perfect place to have the program as it was out of range of both Germany and Japan.

**Freakazoitt**

whembly wrote:
but, we'd stick around. Like cockroaches.

Only cockroaches will survive. And some defective mutants without future. 7 nuclear strikes on sea near shore is enough to make a tsunami which will flood the cities like west or east USA, for example.

**LordofHats**

ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it?

*raises hand*

Dropping a bomb actually requires the means to carry it, and only one nation in the 1940's had the technical capacity to build a plane capable of carrying such a weapon

Seriously, look at the size of it!

Such is a pointless line of inquiry. Japan didn't have the ability to build the bomb, the delivery system, or the technical, scientific, and material resources to even develop such a thing. Frankly, the United States was inevitably going to build the bomb, as the only state on the planet at the time with all the materials to do so. Britain didn't have the plane. Germany and Russia didn't have the Uranium. Japan and Italy had nothing.

It is however a valid line of inquiry to ask "why does the a bomb get special attention?" From a moral perspective, fire bombing a city into oblivion and killing hundreds of thousands, and nuking a city into oblivion killing hundreds of thousands offers paltry difference. The only difference is residual radiation, which in 1945 was so poorly understood the United States planned to march and army into nuclear blast zones, rendering it irrelevant as an issue since it was only understood in hindsight decades after the bombings.

Ultimately there is no relevant moral question about dropping the atomic bomb. The relevant question is was it justified to launch bombing campaigns of civilian targets? The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were extensions of an already existent policy and campaign, and killed far fewer people that were killed in Tokyo or Dresden.

**Kilkrazy**

Britain had already built and used much larger bombs, dropped by Lancaster bomber, against various German targets. They were conventional explosive, of course. Lancasters could have been modified to drop atom bombs, but would have needed the massive logisitical backup that had to be captured and built for the B29.

**LordofHats**

Kilkrazy wrote:
Britain had already built and used much larger bombs, dropped by Lancaster bomber, against various German targets. They were conventional explosive, of course. Lancasters could have been modified to drop atom bombs, but would have needed the massive logisitical backup that had to be captured and built for the B29.

Fat man weighted just over 5 tons. The largest bomb the Lancaster could carry weighed only 2 (it had a total payload of 6 tons(?) but it was not structurally capable of carrying a single 5 ton bomb. The structure of the plane simply wasn't designed for it).

**welshhoppo**

LordofHats wrote:
Kilkrazy wrote:
Britain had already built and used much larger bombs, dropped by Lancaster bomber, against various German targets. They were conventional explosive, of course. Lancasters could have been modified to drop atom bombs, but would have needed the massive logisitical backup that had to be captured and built for the B29.

Fat man weighted just over 5 tons. The largest bomb the Lancaster could carry weighed only 2 (it had a total payload of 6 tons(?) but it was not structurally capable of carrying a single 5 ton bomb. The structure of the plane simply wasn't designed for it).

You underestimate us. The Lancaster could carry a Grand Slam bomb, which weighed ten tonnes.

**LordofHats**

You would be, correct. EDIT: Just double check. Forgot about ol'slammy.

**Ketara**

LordofHats wrote:
. Japan didn't have the ability to build the bomb, the delivery system,

They could have sent a i-400 submarine on a one way trip into a harbour city.

An interesting link that came to my attention this week:-

Captured Cargo, Captivating Mystery
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

The Nazi submarine U-234, which surrendered to American forces in May 1945, was found to be carrying a surprisingly diverse cargo bound for Tokyo as part of a secretive exchange of war materiel between Hitler and Hirohito. The payload represented the pride of German technology and included parts and blueprints for proximity fuzes, antiaircraft shells, jet planes and chemical rockets.

But nothing the U-234 concealed in its warrens was more surprising than 10 containers filled with 1,200 pounds of uranium oxide, a basic material of atomic bombs. Up to then, the Allies suspected that both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had nuclear programs but considered them rudimentary and isolated.

Historians have quietly puzzled over that uranium shipment for years, wondering, among other things, what the American military did with it. Little headway was made because of Federal secrecy. Now, however, a former official of the Manhattan Project, John Lansdale Jr., says that the uranium went into the mix of raw materials used for making the world's first atom bombs. At the time he was an Army lieutenant colonel for intelligence and security for the atom bomb project. One of his main jobs was tracking uranium.

Mr. Lansdale's assertion in an interview raises the possibility that the American weapons that leveled the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki contained at least some nuclear material originally destined for Japan's own atomic program and, perhaps, for attacks on the United States.

If confirmed, that twist of history could add a layer to the already complex debate over whether the United States had any moral justification for using its atom bombs against Japan.

A pivotal question that surrounds the episode is whether the three months between the U-234's surrender in May 1945 and the dropping of the American bombs in August 1945 left the Manhattan Project's bomb builders enough time to incorporate the captured uranium.

Another is whether President Harry S. Truman, who authorized the atomic bombing of Japan, knew of the U-234's radioactive cargo.

At least a dozen historians, journalists and nuclear experts around the world are now at work on this and related mysteries surrounding the U-234, going through newly declassified documents and interviewing aging former members of the German and Japanese militaries and participants in the Manhattan Project.

"There's no question they were hurting for uranium," Dr. Stanley Goldberg, a science historian in Washington who is writing a book on the Manhattan Project, said of the American bomb venture. "They scraped the bottom of the barrel. They came to within an inch of not having enough material for a uranium bomb."

As to whether the weapons used any of the U-234's uranium, Dr. Goldberg, like several historians and nuclear experts, said in an interview that he was unconvinced but intrigued. Even if none of the submarine's cargo went into the explosive mix, some experts hold, the U-234 episode is important to explore for what it reveals about the Japanese atom bomb program, which has long been clouded in ambiguity.

Dr. Peter D. Zimmerman, a physicist who has studied the issue and advises the Defense Department, said, "Where it becomes very significant is if it helps demonstrate that the Japanese had a sizable program and that there was close cooperation among the Axis powers."

The U-234 left the German port of Kiel on March 25, 1945, bound for Japan on a voyage around the horn of Africa. After Hitler's death a month later, the submarine surrendered to American forces in the north Atlantic and was taken to the American submarine base at Portsmouth, N.H., where reporters watched its arrival on May 19, 1945.

In secret, the Navy took careful inventory of the submarine's crew and cargo, recording the details in an exhaustive manifest that today is in a public file at the Navy's Operational Archives at its Historical Center in Washington.

The manifest says that the uranium came in 10 cases, weighed 560 kilograms and was transported from Germany as an oxide, which is a handy industrial form refined from raw uranium ore. Kathy Lloyd, an archivist at the center, said in an interview that the Navy had "no paper trail" on where the shipment went after the inventory.

Dr. Zimmerman said that amount of uranium oxide would have contained about 3.5 kilograms of the isotope U-235, which is the critical one for making bombs. That 3.5 kilograms, he added, would have been about a fifth of the total U-235 needed to make one bomb.

Among the experts who have tried to track the mysterious shipment is Robert K. Wilcox, a journalist and author of "Japan's Secret War" (Marlowe & Company), a book about Tokyo's atom bomb project. After its publication in 1985, he updated the book for a 1995 edition coincident with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan.

But Mr. Wilcox drew a blank after inspections of hundreds of documents in the National Archives, the repository of papers from the Manhattan Project. "What happened to the uranium?" he asked in the book's 1995 edition. "It's as if the incident had never occurred, as if U-234, its important passengers and cargo had never arrived."

Other experts have drawn similar blanks and concluded that the true story lies hidden in the Government's secret files.

But Mr. Lansdale, the former official of the Manhattan Project, displayed no doubts in the interview about the fate of the U-234's shipment. "It went to the Manhattan District," he said without hesitation. "It certainly went into the Manhattan District supply of uranium."

Mr. Lansdale added that he remembered no details of the uranium's destination in the sprawling bomb-making complex and had no opinion on whether it helped make up the material for the first atomic bomb used in war.

In theory, the uranium might have helped fuel the uranium bomb that leveled Hiroshima or the plutonium bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. In a kind of modern alchemy, plutonium is made by irradiating uranium in a nuclear reactor, turning it from one element into another.

Dr. Vilma R. Hunt, a nuclear expert working on a book about uranium used in the war, has researched the fate of the U-234's shipment for years. She said she had concluded that it went into the Manhattan Project's mix, not based on any positive evidence she had been able to unearth but simply because of the project's great need for weapons material.

"At that time, there was a limited amount of uranium oxide available," she said in an interview. "We needed it."

Based on the comments of Mr. Lansdale, she added: "You could go as far as saying it was in the stream and would have had a high likelihood that it went into one of the first three bombs. That would have been pushing the system, but that's what they were doing."

The world's first atomic bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, as a test. Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9.

Dr. Skip Gosling is chief historian of the Federal Department of Energy, which is the successor agency to the Manhattan Project and the Federal Government's authority on making nuclear arms.

In an interview, he said he had long heard rumors that the U-234's shipment ended up at Oak Ridge, Tenn., where the Manhattan Project treated uranium to increase its concentration of the critical U-235 isotope. But he added that he knew of no documentary evidence that bore on the issue and said it would be hard to find such information half a century after the fact.

"My guess is that none of it got in" the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, he said. "But I wouldn't bet my farm on that."

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/31/us/captured-cargo-captivating-mystery.html

**LordofHats**

That is interesting.

**Ghazkuul**

you have about 3 distinct camps in this topic.

Camp 1: People who wish to remind everyone that the US is evil and everything they do is evil.

Camp 2: People who wish to point out that America is great and did amazing things and other horrible atrocities happened at the same time as this

and lastly Camp 3: Realists/Historians: this camp has pointed out that every expert on this from the actual bombing up until now, with 20/20 hindsight has said that if the Allied forces had been forced to fight a Land battle on Japan the casualty figures would have run into the Millions.

So realistically the Mods should just lock this topic because all we have right now is Camp 3 stating a fact, followed by Camp 1 pointing out some random obscure nonsense that makes camp 2 angry and posts further nonsense.

**BaronIveagh**

LordofHats wrote:
ChrisRR wrote:
Who in here thinks that Japan wouldn't have drop an A bomb on US forces if they had it?

*raises hand*

Dropping a bomb actually requires the means to carry it, and only one nation in the 1940's had the technical capacity to build a plane capable of carrying such a weapon

Seriously, look at the size of it!

Getting it that small was an achievement. The original proposal was almost as big as a boxcar until they hit on the beryllium idea.

**Ketara**

Ghazkuul wrote:
you have about 3 distinct camps in this topic.

Camp 1: People who wish to remind everyone that the US is evil and everything they do is evil.

Camp 2: People who wish to point out that America is great and did amazing things and other horrible atrocities happened at the same time as this

and lastly Camp 3: Realists/Historians: this camp has pointed out that every expert on this from the actual bombing up until now, with 20/20 hindsight has said that if the Allied forces had been forced to fight a Land battle on Japan the casualty figures would have run into the Millions.

So realistically the Mods should just lock this topic because all we have right now is Camp 3 stating a fact, followed by Camp 1 pointing out some random obscure nonsense that makes camp 2 angry and posts further nonsense.

You forgot two more.

Camp 4:- People who think Japan would have folded shortly, nuke or no nuke, and that waiting for a few weeks/month (without invading Japan, thus rendering the continued, somewhat boring repetition of invasion casualty figures irrelevant) would potentially have been the more humane thing to do, but acknowledge that geopolitical aims pushed for an immediate deployment.

and Camp 5:- People posting slightly insulting misrepresentations of other people's stances (for some unknown nefarious provocative purpose, no doubt).

**Ratius**

We're not going to make it. Humanity, I mean?

Its in your nature to destroy yourselves

I think the use of atomics was beyond reason, beyond humanity, they were civilian cities that died either horrifically or slow, woeful death.
The counter argument for land invasion is well rehashed but why not demonstrate it off some un manned island?

You cant fake an aotimc especially back then
Having seen what my country saw for its independence - yes going waaaay back too, the atomic was just brute force applied for the right reason in the wrong way. Most certainly the wrong way.

**Vaktathi**

Ketara wrote:
Ghazkuul wrote:
you have about 3 distinct camps in this topic.

Camp 1: People who wish to remind everyone that the US is evil and everything they do is evil.

Camp 2: People who wish to point out that America is great and did amazing things and other horrible atrocities happened at the same time as this

and lastly Camp 3: Realists/Historians: this camp has pointed out that every expert on this from the actual bombing up until now, with 20/20 hindsight has said that if the Allied forces had been forced to fight a Land battle on Japan the casualty figures would have run into the Millions.

So realistically the Mods should just lock this topic because all we have right now is Camp 3 stating a fact, followed by Camp 1 pointing out some random obscure nonsense that makes camp 2 angry and posts further nonsense.

You forgot two more.

Camp 4:- People who think Japan would have folded shortly, nuke or no nuke, and that waiting for a few weeks/month (without invading Japan, thus rendering the continued, somewhat boring repetition of invasion casualty figures irrelevant) would potentially have been the more humane thing to do, but acknowledge that geopolitical aims pushed for an immediate deployment.

This would have been a very likely outcome.

As noted, figures for the expected invasion of Japan don't hold up. The US had total domination of the skies and seas. Japanese industry was smashed, she couldn't produce useable weapons or munitions. Japan's resource base was cut off and destroyed, she had no materials with which to make anything. Fuel was an even more pressing problem, a single US carrier battlegroup used more fuel in a month than Japan had left in her entire strategic reserves. Food was a critical issue, medical care was almost nonexistent, and civil infrastructure was largely obliterated anywhere it mattered.

One can look at the Soviet invasion of Manchuria as to a likely scenario. Much of the best of the Japanese army was stationed there (what was left of it), and it was obliterated and overrun in very short order with (relatively) few casuatlies, with very large number of surrenders relative to earlier battles in the war.

The Japanese were done, and already attempting to engage in negotiations through the USSR. The A-bombs didn't inflict any greater level of damage than firebombings did, in fact somewhat less, they just did it with a single bomb instead of hundreds of bombers, though with what amounted to complete air supremacy it's not like it mattered. What probably made a bigger difference to force the surrender of japan than the A-bombs was the invasion of the USSR. This not only led to the above military humiliation in what was Japan's most important colony, but also cut off their one hope of a negotiated settlement.

**LordofHats**

Also Camp 6; People who moral questions concerning the atomic bombings is misguided, as the fundamental moral question involved was identical to those already brushed aside by the Allies when they started fire bombing German and Japanese cities earlier in the war.

Camp 6 would like to motion camp 1 apologize for being a meanie poo poo head, that camp 2 get off its high horse, and that Camp 3 and 4 come over for Pizza and Dr Pepper with assurances no one will be beaten with pillow cases full of hard back first editions.

**Ratius**

The A-bombs didn't inflict any greater level of damage than firebombings did, in fact somewhat less, they just did it with a single bomb instead of hundreds of bombers, though with what amounted to complete air supremacy it's not like it mattered.

Thats a valid point, somewhat forgotten sometimes. Well said.