Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

Timber - you may remember from long-ago postings on another site that I (a schoolgirl at the time) tagged along with my uncle, a senior NATO general, when he went to present his condolences to Mrs. MacArthur upon his death.

Her apartment (then at the Waldorf Towers, East 50th Street) was absolutely chock-full with mementoes from Japan - some inexpensive, like ukiyo-e reproductions, some of inestimable value, like letters of Admiral Togo in formal calligraphy beautifully framed in gold-leaf. All, said the lady, were presents of the people of Japan to the late general, expressing their gratitude for the fact that he allowed Hirohito to continue in his family's millenial line as emperor.

That factor may also account for the unquestionable loyalty of Japan as an ally during the half-century since - do not underestimate it.

CI - thanks so much for the link with translation of the emperor's speech. I do note that while he never called himself or his ancestors "divine", the Japanese isles are so designated in the speech. In the unfolding century I think that Japan's friendship towards the US will in no small part be based on our understanding that Japan may be "an aircraft carrier positioned off the coast of China" and that it's inhabited by a people who share a very great deal with the West.

Steve - airbursts minimize fallout: there's less ground dust and particulate matter raised to high altitudes.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Don't understand how airburt nuclear weapons minimises radiation damage.

The fallout drifts away in the cloud, and comes down in rain far away, or settles down evenly worldwide after years, or some combination of both, depending on the yield of the explosion.

For local fallout contamination you need a ground burst. The radioactive particles will condense on the heavy particles of earth thrown up by the explosion, and these heavy particles come down locally.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

However it maximises damage from pressure waves.

Yes, for those pressures that are of use in destroying above-ground construction.

Destroying a missile silo would require a groundburst however.

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Cicerone - most unfortunately my Japanese isn't sufficient to even read newspaper headlines, let alone the emperor's original text. I had however wondered whether you could actually read the original and compare it to the translation - regret if this was an unwarranted assumption on my part.

It's a very formal, restrained, but clear and incredibly moving speech...

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imperialracing wrote:

However, as it is, the U.S. only had enough supplies for two atom bombs. Why waste them on the ocean? I don't know, we'd have to be pretty darn stupid. And to those who said that "Oh, you are cruel human beings for inflicting this on innocent people." Well, little do you know that Hideki Tojo put a ruling into the Japanese Code which was called Bushida. In this code, all Japanese people were to "fight to the death", "die before surrender", and "death before dishonor". You wonder why there were so few Japanese people captured? It's because they would commit suicide and often attempt to kill their captors as well. Just because you are all for the lives of other human beings doesn't mean you can ignore the facts. Don't let your emotions overtake you, because sometimes you have to kill other people to save the lives of others.

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All good points, goldeneagle88. Just one minor point -- the code of Bushido was not something that Tojo "put into the Japanese Code." Bushido is the ancient tradition of the Samurai caste of warriors, dating at least back to the Shogunate and beyond. It includes the tradition of Sepukko (sometimes called Hari Kiri by Westerners) which obligates a disgraced warrior to kill himself. If it were not for the long-standing tradition of this "death before dishonor" code, it would have been impossible to recruit the Kamikaze, the suicide pilots of planes that would intentionally crash into American ships.

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HofT, Sorry, but there's no way for me to personally compare the Japanese version to the English translation. My brother had a professor from Japan that translated our family history for us written in Chinese caligraphy some years ago, but even then he was able to translate about 98 percent of it. Most of the Japanese of today cannot read the 'old' style Japanese writings because of the inclusion of two more alphabets to the Japanese language. Sorry, can't help this time.

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goldeneagle88 wrote:

However, as it is, the U.S. only had enough supplies for two atom bombs. Why waste them on the ocean? I don't know, we'd have to be pretty darn stupid.

Actually our production rate was three a month. The third one for August was about a week away from hitting Tokyo when they surrendered. In December, the production rate would have increased to 7+ a month.

Use on the ocean wouldn't have been a useful demonstration, as there would have been no measure of the size of the explosion. However, it is possible that we could have used a plutonium bomb over a forested area, with the felled trees testifying to the power of the bombs.

But in the end, we were mostly interested in hitting the Japanese as hard as we could. And nothing was more shocking than the sudden loss of an entire city to one bomb.

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Oralloy - Professor Bethe (who died yesterday aged 98) contradicts your "production rate" of 3/mo, though in fairness I believe it to be absent-minded wording on your part.

Different designs were being tried in fairly artisanal conditions and there was no 3rd bomb at the time Japan signed unconditional surrender.

Transportation was a hazard in addition to manufacturing uncertainties - viz. the ship sunk in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine torpedo only days before that surrender.

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HofT wrote:

Oralloy - Professor Bethe (who died yesterday aged 98) contradicts your "production rate" of 3/mo,

Where?

HofT wrote:

though in fairness I believe it to be absent-minded wording on your part.

No absent minded wording. That was the official estimate that the bomb scientists provided the Secretary of War.

HofT wrote:

Different designs were being tried in fairly artisanal conditions and there was no 3rd bomb at the time Japan signed unconditional surrender.

There was no assembled bomb, but we had all the components for a third bomb as of August 11. If we had chosen to combine the components, that would have comprised a third bomb. The earliest the components could have been combined for use on Japan was August 17, so technically it wasn't ready when they surrendered. However, it was pretty close.

HofT wrote:

Transportation was a hazard in addition to manufacturing uncertainties - viz. the ship sunk in the South Pacific by a Japanese submarine torpedo only days before that surrender.

There was always a chance that the next plutonium core could have been attacked and destroyed in transit, though given the speed they expected it to arrive at Tinian, I have to wonder if they weren't flying it out there. I'm not sure how vulnerable a US airplane was to attack over the Pacific at that point in the war.

There wasn't much in the way of manufacturing uncertainties at the time. The scientists had a good handle on how many they could have produced.

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Quote:

However, as it is, the U.S. only had enough supplies for two atom bombs. Why waste them on the ocean? I don't know, we'd have to be pretty darn stupid. And to those who said that "Oh, you are cruel human beings for inflicting this on innocent people." Well, little do you know that Hideki Tojo put a ruling into the Japanese Code which was called Bushida. In this code, all Japanese people were to "fight to the death", "die before surrender", and "death before dishonor". You wonder why there were so few Japanese people captured? It's because they would commit suicide and often attempt to kill their captors as well. Just because you are all for the lives of other human beings doesn't mean you can ignore the facts. Don't let your emotions overtake you, because sometimes you have to kill other people to save the lives of others.

It's not about emotions. It's basically an ethical question and doubts about the circumstances of the moment. Was it really necessary for the bombs to be dropped when the Japanese might have surrendered?
I can find many dillemas with your last statements. It's not an easy question and something that we'll never know for sure. This is not something for history to decide.

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I found an interesting site on the subject, but I'm not sure if it's historically valid or not:

Webpage Title

Quote:

It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

This one's particularly disturbing if it's true:

Quote:

United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

The apparent bias in this article makes me question its historical validity though.

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"The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification."

Thanks Ray. I wasn't aware of the Trohan article but it backs up everything I've been saying.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were assaults on a beaten foe. They were experiments with the weapons of the future conducted in haste while America still had a current enemy.

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Ray wrote:

I found an interesting site on the subject, but I'm not sure if it's historically valid or not:

Webpage Title

Quote:
It was only after the war that the American public learned about Japan's efforts to bring the conflict to an end. Chicago Tribune reporter Walter Trohan, for example, was obliged by wartime censorship to withhold for seven months one of the most important stories of the war.

In an article that finally appeared August 19, 1945, on the front pages of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times-Herald, Trohan revealed that on January 20, 1945, two days prior to his departure for the Yalta meeting with Stalin and Churchill, President Roosevelt received a 40-page memorandum from General Douglas MacArthur outlining five separate surrender overtures from high-level Japanese officials. (The complete text of Trohan's article is in the Winter 1985-86 Journal, pp. 508-512.)

This memo showed that the Japanese were offering surrender terms virtually identical to the ones ultimately accepted by the Americans at the formal surrender ceremony on September 2 -- that is, complete surrender of everything but the person of the Emperor. Specifically, the terms of these peace overtures included:

Complete surrender of all Japanese forces and arms, at home, on island possessions, and in occupied countries.
Occupation of Japan and its possessions by Allied troops under American direction.
Japanese relinquishment of all territory seized during the war, as well as Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan.
Regulation of Japanese industry to halt production of any weapons and other tools of war.
Release of all prisoners of war and internees.
Surrender of designated war criminals.
Is this memorandum authentic? It was supposedly leaked to Trohan by Admiral William D. Leahy, presidential Chief of Staff. (See: M. Rothbard in A. Goddard, ed., Harry Elmer Barnes: Learned Crusader [1968], pp. 327f.) Historian Harry Elmer Barnes has related (in "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe," National Review, May 10, 1958):

The authenticity of the Trohan article was never challenged by the White House or the State Department, and for very good reason. After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every detail and without qualification.

There may have been five attempts to surrender on those terms. Whether they were all from "high level" officials is highly questionable, though. I suspect they were stretching the definition of "high level".

Regardless, none of these surrender attempts were "by the Japanese", as the article claims, or by the Japanese government.

And it was the Japanese government who counted when it came to surrender. The Japanese government did not attempt to surrender "with only a guarantee for the Emperor" until August 10. And the guarantee they wanted was not just "for his person" but for his complete sovereignty as ruler of Japan.

The US responded to this first surrender attempt by delaying shipment of the next A-bomb core for three days. However, we were about to nuke a densely-populated part of Tokyo that had remained standing if they had continued to cling to this demand.

The first time the Japanese government offered to accept our terms unconditionally was August 14, at which point the war was over.

Ray wrote:

This one's particularly disturbing if it's true:

Quote:
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

The apparent bias in this article makes me question its historical validity though.

The survey was not a detailed study of the A-bombs, but a propaganda piece designed to convince Congress that the only weapons that needed funding were conventional air power because that was all that was needed to win a war. The point was to secure as large a budget as possible in the post-war years where defense funding was rapidly plummeting.

The primary consideration in selecting A-bomb targets was that they be large enough so that their complete destruction by a single bomb would be a great shock to the Japanese. The next goal was to choose targets of military value if possible.

But aside from Kokura Arsenal (the second choice after Hiroshima) the only targets big enough to establish the power of the bomb to the Japanese were cities.

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Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were assaults on a beaten foe.

A beaten foe, yes. But one that was still refusing to accept our surrender terms.

Steve (as 41oo) wrote:

They were experiments with the weapons of the future conducted in haste while America still had a current enemy.

The military always takes advantage of combat use of new weapons to see how they work.

However, the motive for dropping the bombs was to shock the Japanese government into accepting our surrender terms.

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Oralloy - first on your question about Hans Bethe: he was as you know head of theoretical physics for the Manhattan project and in giving delivery dates to the military for August 1945 he cautioned there was necessarily uncertainty due to manufacturing (not theoretical design) difficulties. You realize components have to be precision-crafted practically at the molecular level and at the time much had to be done by hand - so speaking of a "manufacturing rate of 3/month" doesn't accurately reflect conditions at the time.

Next: in addition to forcing Japan to unconditional surrender I wonder if the motives didn't also include scaring Stalin into stopping his armies' advances in both Europe and the Far East. Some contemporary documents suggest that this factor weighed more heavily than Japan's surrender.

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On Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune - didn't he also write a series of articles about conditions on the ground in Hiroshima with descriptions of flash burn victims who had to wait in line for medical care ever while skin and muscles were peeling off their bones?

Symptoms of flash burns and longer-term effects of radiation sickness weren't well known at the time so that story was also withheld by the censors until army medics could write their own reports.

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"Symptoms of flash burns and longer-term effects of radiation sickness weren't well known at the time so that story was also withheld by the censors until army medics could write their own reports."

The US army measured every inch of Nagasaki and Hiroshima as soon as they could. They wanted to analyse the results of the experiment.

Orallay...The final surrender terms accepted by the Americans in August were the virtually the same as Japan offered 6 months earlier. The haggling over unconditional surrender was deliberate knowing the Japanese could never accept it. The purpose was to cause delay and keep Japan in the war until the A bomb experiment was ready. [imho, but please tell me where i'm wrong iyho]

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Steve, once again, no surrender negotiations were entered into, nor terms of surrender agreed to BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT prior to the droppin' of the Nagasaki bomb. The Japanese government specifically, officially, defiantly, and publically rejected Allied surrender demands up to that time. Key - and only relevant - point. There was no "haggling over unconditional terms", as you put it; there were no governmental-level negotiations period.

Prior to Germany's governmental capitulation to The Allies' surrender terms in May '45, there were numerous non-governmental surrender or ceasefire initiatives undertaken by an assortment of "High Level Figures", dating all the way back to Rudolf Hess' bizare, abortive 1941 flight to Scotland. Until the German Government capitulated, Germany remained at war and had not surrendered, irrespective and regardless of her will or ability to continue to resist. Precisely the same applies to Japan. There simply is no counter-argument.

Dealing with another point raised earlier -

Quote:

... United States Strategic Bombing Survey (issued in 1946) stated in its official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."

The key point here that some apparently overlook is that the referrenced "activities" included manfacturing, transportation, communications, and assorted military assets - all legitmate targets. Some cold-blooded argument may be made as well that, given the technological means contemporarily available, the housing, other pertinent infrastructure, and morale of the labor pool available to effect those "activities" would be itself, as a critical component of those "activities", a legitimate target.

War is a nasty business - the nastiest.

Period.

There are few niceties involved, though unfortunately, unpleasant, regrettable, horrific, but legitmate, necessary choices and actions abound. Thats the very, and inescapable, nature of the activity.

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Timber your bits in quotes:-

"Steve, once again, no surrender negotiations were entered into, nor terms of surrender agreed to BY THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT prior to the droppin' of the Nagasaki bomb."

That's what I keep saying. America was holding out until the bomb was ready.

"The Japanese government specifically, officially, defiantly, and publically rejected Allied surrender demands up to that time."

Which was for unconditional surrender, something the Japs could not accept, and something the Americans knew they could not accept.

"there were no governmental-level negotiations period. "

correct. There was nothing to negotiate about. The Japanese could not accept unconditional surrender and the Americans knew they would not accept unconditional surrender. Got it yet?

The Japanese feelers were govt. to govt. through the Swiss, not individual freelance efforts. Your analogy does not hold.

Regarding the "activities" in Hiroshima, of course the bomb needed to be used against a real economically active city target. Its no use dropping it on a sea side resort to see how many beach loungers it destroys.

"There are few niceties involved, though unfortunately, unpleasant, regrettable, horrific, but legitmate, necessary choices and actions abound. Thats the very, and inescapable, nature of the activity"

I have no idea to what you refer.

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HofT wrote:

Oralloy - first on your question about Hans Bethe: he was as you know head of theoretical physics for the Manhattan project and in giving delivery dates to the military for August 1945 he cautioned there was necessarily uncertainty due to manufacturing (not theoretical design) difficulties. You realize components have to be precision-crafted practically at the molecular level and at the time much had to be done by hand - so speaking of a "manufacturing rate of 3/month" doesn't accurately reflect conditions at the time.

We had put an enormous effort into overcoming all these manufacturing difficulties. The scientists based their three-a-month estimate on the manufacturing capability that we had developed.

Anyway, even if something unforeseen had disrupted production after August, there was definitely going to be another bomb for August if the war continued, because we had all the components as of August 11. The only thing we didn't do was assemble them.

HofT wrote:

Next: in addition to forcing Japan to unconditional surrender I wonder if the motives didn't also include scaring Stalin into stopping his armies' advances in both Europe and the Far East. Some contemporary documents suggest that this factor weighed more heavily than Japan's surrender.

What documents are these?

There is quite a lot of evidence that Truman's only concern with the Soviets at the time was trying to coax them to join the war against Japan.

Truman actually made a point of giving the Soviets a pass on those conquests so as to not provoke them into staying out of the war against Japan.

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Was it a war crime when US nuked Hiroshima & Nagasaki?

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