Did U.S. Have to Drop Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The scoreboard reflected ONLY the total number of nuclear weapons used against another people. We've used 2. Nobody else has used any.

It was not intended as a "State of the World" calculation. Sheeesh.

 

Precisely 70 years ago.

 

Of course the answer is no, the U.S. didn't have to drop the bomb.

The question is, was it the best course of action?

Lots of people say yes, some say no.

I think you could easily make the case that Nagasaki wasn't necessary. If you wanted to prove it wasn't the U.S. wasn't one-bomb wonder, you could have dropped it in the occean nearby and said you have plenty where that came from, right?

 

I think that fact that we needed to drop two, not at the same time, to get them to give up pretty much says they were not on the verge of giving up anytime soon when the first one was dropped.

Dropping the bomb was horrible, but taking the entire island of Japan would have been a complete and total shitshow. We would have done it, but it would have been slow and bloody.

Japan pretty much was doomed after Midway and they were totally fucked when Germany and the Axis forces played down their weapons three months prior and America could focus resources on Japan.

 

Did you follow the link to the actual statement? There's nothing in it that implies a "defense" of his decision. It's a completely straightforward statement explaining what the bomb is and some of the background on how it was developed.

The "defended his decision" description is revisionist verbiage used by the present-day editors.

 

But Truman did have to "defend his decision" to many people. Questioning the use of the bomb is not a new thing.

Mises Daily | Mises Institute
MILITARY VIEWS About Dropping the Atomic Bomb

 

Both bombs were necessary because they refused to surrender. Besides, they started it by bombing Pearl Harbor, so a little payback was probably in order, propelled in part by racism. Would we have used the bomb on the Germans? Maybe.

 

The bomb was developed because the Americans thought Hitler was going to build one. They might have dropped it on Germany if the war went in that direction. If D-Day hadn't worked, they might have (though Stalin was doing pretty well driving Germany back to the sea).

There have been questions for years about the use of the bomb that only grew in number as the full ramifications of dropping the bombs came into light. The lingering effects of the bombs called their use into even greater question as Japan dealt with the radiation exposure.

But it's an interesting debate about the decision to actually drop the bombs. Scientists such as Einstein famously implored Truman to not use the weapon. Oppenheimer lamented that he had become death, in quoting the Hindu text. That was contrasted with the very real possibility that invading Japan would produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 million casualties between the two sides. Japan was gearing up its citizenry to make one last stand in defense of the home land. Russia making the turn away from Germany to launch into Japan opened the possibility that Stalin would have taken over and he would never leave. Japan was finished, but if you look at the battles of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, casualties were horrendous and dragged on. The invasion of the home islands would have taken forever.

 

Can sympathize with Japan....

 

When Japan began throwing kamikazes at enemy ships, it became pretty clear what an invasion was going to look like, and that surrender wasn't in their vocabulary at that point.

 

Here's a thought: If Japan had developed the bomb first, would they have used it against the US?

I'm thinking they would have. Without hesitation.