75 years ago today, Truman saved my uncle's life

Air power alone was not going to end the war in the Pacific.

Except that it did...

I see what you're saying, though. I tend to think enough incendiaries would have eventually made them surrender, but it would have taken longer and put more aircrews at risk. Similar number of dead civilians, though.
 
Often wondered whether there would have been much of the Japanese population left if the U.S. had invaded and not dropped the bomb. As horrible the casualty level was the dropping of the atomic bomb saved countless lives
 
Often wondered whether there would have been much of the Japanese population left if the U.S. had invaded and not dropped the bomb. As horrible the casualty level was the dropping of the atomic bomb saved countless lives
There are some that say the Japanese race would cease to exist. You cut a population down too far and they just can't reproduce in enough quantity to make it.
 
Find a copy of the July/August 2020 issue of National geographic. Fascinating stuff.

"On March 9-10, 300 B29 rained down firebombs on Tokyo killing 100,000+. More than 60 other cities suffered the same fate between march and the War's end in August. The total number of fatalities has been difficult to pinpoint: some place the figure as low as 300,000, while others believe it could be as many as 500,000."

They spared firebombing some cities (Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki, and Niigata) in anticipation of dropping the atom bombs, so there would be no doubt what caused the destruction.

July 25, a Top Secret directive from Lt. Gen. Thomas Handy said that "after 3 August 1945, the 20th Air Force would deliver it's first "Special bomb" on one of the 4 target cities. Furthermore, additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as they are made ready by the project staff." New target would be chosen once the first 4 were eliminated. It was not an order to drop one atomic bomb; it was an order to permit the dropping of as many atomic bombs that were or would become available.

The "third bomb" was made ready to ship out from Los Alamos, New Mexico August 12-13 and would be ready to drop on a Japanese city in about a week. That next city was going to be Tokyo. "More destruction would be obtained from using a clean target, but it is believed that the psychological effect on the government officials [there] is more important at this time than destruction." Gen Spaatz

They had anticipated having available as many as 12 more atomic bombs "within weeks". The biggest discussion was whether to use them now in an attempt to make Japan surrender, or save them for the invasion. Had the War continued, the bombs would have definitely been used.
 
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is incredibly thorough. It's the definitive work. One of the problems the planners had was that their target list was rapidly shrinking; everyplace important had already been bombed to smithereens. Hiroshima was an empty naval base, and it was considered to be by far the best target available.

Kokura was supposed to have been the objective of the second sortie. Lucky for the people there, it was a cloudy day and their neighbors had been bombed (with much smoke), so they diverted to Nagasaki (which had very little military significance other than a minor Mitsubishi plant).
 
The problem in invading Japan was there were only one set of beaches that were suitable for a large-scale landing. We knew this, and the Japanese knew this. We’d broken most of their codes and were updating their Order Of Battle as they moved troops into position to defend the beachhead in depth. Having defended many islands, they had very highly developed defensive plans.

Another consideration was the Russians. They had started moving troops eastward and as naive as we might have been, there were already indications that the Russians were planning to annex everything they could get their hands on. Note that Russia occupied a number of the Northern Kuril Islands in August 1945. American reconnaissance planes sent to the area were deflected by Soviet fighters - possibly even aircraft we gave them!

My father was an E6 aerial gunner and Aviation Machinists Mate on the USS Wasp. The Japanese Air Force having been almost completely destroyed, he and hundreds of other crewmen had started training in Infantry tactics. After supporting an attack on Wake Island in July ‘45, she was off the coast of Japan flying humanitarian missions to the POW camps. My dad had a picture in his yearbook with “THANK WASP” written in white paint on the roof of a barracks. It was considered likely the Japanese would kill all POW’s in the event of invasion.

On 8/25/45 Wasp sailed through a typhoon on the way home. She was converted for troop transport and spent most of of 1946 transporting troops home from Europe: 5,000 men and 400 officers per trip.
 
I worked with 2 WWII Vets who swore the bomb saved their lives. George Johansen was a kid from Boston who was an Army FO and fought in New Guinea, The Phillipines and Okinawa. They were staging for the invasion when the bomb was dropped. Joe Mabey was a BAR man who fought across France and into Germany and after the German surrender his unit was being prepped to be shipped to the South Pacific for the invasion. Anyone doubting the reasoning for dropping the bomb should read Chris Wallace's new book, " Countdown 1945".
 
And don't forget the Japanese planned
to kill thousands of Americans prisoners if an attack ensued. I think I wrote this a few years ago.

 
I worked with 2 WWII Vets who swore the bomb saved their lives. George Johansen was a kid from Boston who was an Army FO and fought in New Guinea, The Phillipines and Okinawa. They were staging for the invasion when the bomb was dropped. Joe Mabey was a BAR man who fought across France and into Germany and after the German surrender his unit was being prepped to be shipped to the South Pacific for the invasion. Anyone doubting the reasoning for dropping the bomb should read Chris Wallace's new book, " Countdown 1945".
The invasion was originally planned for September 1945. Sliding to October or November was being discussed.
 
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The New York Chemical Procurement District operated as a war-time field office from 1940-46. My grandfather worked there as an inspector of “small parts” that went into the manufacture of the atomic bombs as part of the Manhattan Project. An employee’s job usually determined their level of security clearance. Low-level workers with highly compartmentalized work were generally given red or blue badges, depending on their level.

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Following V-E Day, the New York and Boston districts were consolidated under one commanding officer, and in June 1945 Colonel Hurd commanding officer of the Boston district was named commanding officer of the New York district. The New York district field office was closed in 1946.
 
Some great stories in this thread; thank you all for sharing!
A good reminder of true patriots who loved their country.
 
My neighbor in Plymouth always celebrated Harry Truman’s birthday with a few martinis. When I asked him why he credited Truman with saving his life. Then he told me about his experiences at Okinawa. When the Japanese surrendered there was a collective sigh of relief across the Pacific as those of us who were out here actually now had a chance to enjoy their life. After what they experienced at Okinawa anyone who made it through that battle felt they would never survive the invasion of Japan.
He also mixed a great martini.
 
Yes, new guy, I did read the article. It's one man's opinion, judging events 75 years ago based on today's "woke" morals and values.
 
Many agree that requiring unconditional surrender was a mistake: in fact some argue Roosevelt said it by mistake. I agree we shouldn’t have closed so many options.

But this article is revisionist history. We did not have access to the inner workings of the Japanese High Command and their relationship with the Emperor.

By late in the war the US succeeded in breaking the Japanese Army codes (we’d broken their diplomatic and naval codes from the start). Prior to that, the only way we had order of battle Information was through naval transport orders and reports. The Japanese Army used a complex code with different headers for different echelons, which resisted breaking until mid 1944. From then on we had details on Japanese troop deployments, manufacture of suicide submarines, conversion of their remaining aircraft to Kamikazes, etc. The intelligence we had available did not show the Japanese were ready to surrender under any circumstances.

Another observable fact was that the Japanese had killed an estimated six million non-combatants. The death rate for American POW’s held by Italy and Germany was about the same as ours: 2-4%. In Japanese hands it was 25-40%. We knew about the Bataan Death March: in fact survivor accounts were first reported in January 1944 and the Sixth Ranger Battalion and Philippine guerrillas had already liberated the survivors. Of the 80,000 allied soldiers that were captured, 54,000 made it to the camps, roughly 10,000 Americans. The 6th Rangers liberated 512.

An American Bombardier was displayed naked in a cage at the Tokyo Zoo. American POW’s were starved, used as slave labor, for target practice, for recreational beheadings. In several instances, captured aviators were butchered and eaten.

We can’t judge the actions of decision makers with information not available to those decision makers.
 
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I suspect you wouldn’t find many people in the summer of 1945 (outside of Japan) who second-guessed dropping the bombs.
 
Many agree that requiring unconditional surrender was a mistake: in fact some argue Roosevelt said it by mistake. I agree we shouldn’t have closed so many options.

But this article is revisionist history. We did not have access to the inner workings of the Japanese High Command and their relationship with the Emperor.

By late in the war the US succeeded in breaking the Japanese Army codes (we’d broken their diplomatic and naval codes from the start). Prior to that, the only way we had order of battle Information was through naval transport orders and reports. The Japanese Army used a complex code with different headers for different echelons, which resisted breaking until mid 1944. From then on we had details on Japanese troop deployments, manufacture of suicide submarines, conversion of their remaining aircraft to Kamikazes, etc. The intelligence we had available did not show the Japanese were ready to surrender under any circumstances.

Another observable fact was that the Japanese had killed an estimated six million non-combatants. The death rate for American POW’s held by Italy and Germany was about the same as ours: 2-4%. In Japanese hands it was 25-40%. We knew about the Bataan Death March: in fact survivor accounts were first reported in January 1944 and the Sixth Ranger Battalion and Philippine guerrillas had already liberated the survivors. Of the 80,000 allied soldiers that were captured, 54,000 made it to the camps, roughly 10,000 Americans. The 6th Rangers liberated 512.

An American Bombardier was displayed naked in a cage at the Tokyo Zoo. American POW’s were starved, used as slave labor, for target practice, for recreational beheadings. In several instances, captured aviators were butchered and eaten.

We can’t judge the actions of decision makers with information not available to those decision makers.

The problem is that everyone’s constantly trying to manipulate/interpret history for their own purposes, so sometimes it’s tough to tell which version is the truth.
 
Surrender was not unconditional. The one concession the allied powers made was not deposing the emperor. He should have been tried for war crime, but was given a pass as a term of surrender.
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And then went on to travel the world and get his picture taking with Mickey Mouse. Friggin unbelievable! That was all McAurthurs doing too.
 
Well, you can't bomb the bejeebers out of the Japanese because we are upset over Nanking regardless of what they did. This isn't a playground fight.

I don't think it was a mistake, per se. It was what we had and it DID save American lives. Because that was that many fewer bombers that had to go over the Japanese Mainland again to kill just as many anyhow.

But the B-29 bombings were insanely effective. The bombing of Tokyo alone took out 100K people. The conflagration was so spectacular it was felt by the pilots. In May alone, Lemay's forces destroyed 1/7th of ALL of the urban landscape of ALL of Japan. 1/7th in one month.

It was always a matter of two bombs or 100 more nights of raids. (Which had stopped a month earlier. . . in part b/c they ran out of targets except for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)
Nagasaki was chisen because the original city of choice was covered in clouds.
 

"Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war….Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, cost us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace."

[rofl2]
 
I suspect you wouldn’t find many people in the summer of 1945 (outside of Japan) who second-guessed dropping the bombs.
A number of the scientists who developed it were against it.

Robert Oppenheimer, having observed the first test explosion, wrote, “ Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” He felt he “Had blood on my hands.”

Truman told him, “The blood is on my hands, let me worry about that,” and kicked him out of his office.
 
also the American public was sick of War and many Politicians didn't think the country could stand another 2 yrs of War and hundreds of thousands of casualties. The country was broke and war bonds weren't cutting it. An invasion would have been a blood bath. My deceased friend George once told me after invading an island they had pushed the Japs into the jungle of the other side of the air strip which was the objective. All night they could hear the Japs yelling and singing and knew there would be a banzai attack at dawn. The army brought up quad .50's mounted on halftracks and stationed them so they would have interlocking fields of fire on the airstrip. My friend and his unit dug in and waited. Sure enough at dawn they came by the thousands and the quad 50's decimated them. George told me they kept coming and dying until they were all dead or wounded. They had to bring in bulldozers to bury all the dead Jap soldiers. That was a prelude to the invasion of Japan.
 
also the American public was sick of War and many Politicians didn't think the country could stand another 2 yrs of War and hundreds of thousands of casualties. The country was broke and war bonds weren't cutting it. An invasion would have been a blood bath. My deceased friend George once told me after invading an island they had pushed the Japs into the jungle of the other side of the air strip which was the objective. All night they could hear the Japs yelling and singing and knew there would be a banzai attack at dawn. The army brought up quad .50's mounted on halftracks and stationed them so they would have interlocking fields of fire on the airstrip. My friend and his unit dug in and waited. Sure enough at dawn they came by the thousands and the quad 50's decimated them. George told me they kept coming and dying until they were all dead or wounded. They had to bring in bulldozers to bury all the dead Jap soldiers. That was a prelude to the invasion of Japan.
That sounds like the Battle for Henderson Field, also called the Battle of Lunga Point, in which the 7th Marines and Army troops from the Americal Division defeated the last Japanese assault. One of the first battle tests for th.

But it could also have been later in the war when we retook the Philippines. Don’t recall the name of that one.
 
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My dad was 18, training as radar operator in Navy, and was scheduled for shipping out to the Pacific within weeks, ( to get in place for
invasion of mainland Japan), when the bombs were dropped.

He believed that the bombs were key to ending the war quickly. He also said that when the first one was dropped, there
was widespread skepticsm that there really was an atomic bomb, many people thought it might have been a barge of TNT towed secretly into
Hiroshima port. The second bomb served to disprove that, and also prove that the US actually had more than one A bomb, which many experts
wondered about, considering that the Germans had given up on trying to build one (due partly to Heisenberg miscalculating how much
uranium was needed for critical mass)


The emperor of Japan apparently agreed, in his radio address to the Japanese people he said
"To strive for the common prosperity and happiness of all nations, as well as the security and wellbeing of our subjects, is the solemn obligation which has been handed down by our imperial ancestors and which lies close to our heart," he explained. "The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

He declared that the military would be disarmed, suggesting this would happen not because disarmament had been forced upon Japan (it had), but because Japan had made the difficult choice to privilege peace. It wasn't wholly true, but it helped replace the imperial ideology of war with an ideology of peace that persists to this day.
 
My Friend George graduated from Boston Tech and was working at Watertown Arsenal when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. He told me a few months later the whole machine shop marched to the Army Recruiting station and signed up en masss. George was only 17 and his Mom wouldn't wouldn't sign his enlistment papers. When he turned 18 he signed up for Naval Flight school but got his draft notice before the Navy got back to him. He told me 2 months after enlisting while in boot camp his Mother received his letter from the Navy accepting him. He told me he thinks if he went Navy he probably would have been a dead pilot. Also his buddies from the machine shop were on a troop transport heading to the invasion of North Africa when a German sub sunk the ship and they all drowned. Talk about the fickle finger of fate. When George returned from the war he rented a cabin in NH and stayed there for 6 months fishing because he didn't think it was a good idea to mingle with civilians. Around 1959 a widow of one of Platoon buddies contacted him to tell him he buddy committed suicide. George started contacting his fellow Soldiers and was very disturbed to find out how many had killed themselves or were severe alcoholics who sat in their rooms all day drinking. George was the calmest guy I ever met. I can tell you many stories of WWII combat vets I knew and it ain't pretty. There was no such thing as PTSD back then and was the main reason I joined the Army Reserve and became an 11B at 33 yrs old. Many of my friends Fathers who were combat vets started going downhill in the late 60's, early 70's and we didn't get it. My Father was Navy but never saw action according to my Mother who met him at a USO dance in NH during the war.
 
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