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Originally Posted by Guest
I am not sure I follow your argument about how/why we developed an atomic weapon. First off, the bomb was developed in secrecy so there wasn't any announcement of our intentions. Secondly, the actual motivation was the fear that Germany would develop an atomic weapon. The intention was to develop a weapon. Germany's development effort never yielded a weapon and the war ended before our weapons were completed. The decision to use the weapon against Japan has been a widely discussed topic. I believe the most likely reasons were revenge and making a political statement to Russia. From a pragmatic point of view, a demonstration of the weapon in a non populated area may have been sufficient to motivate Japan to surrender. Also, Japan's military had effectively been eliminated except for troops in Japan. They had no air force or navy of consequence and the country had effectively been bombed into oblivion. We could have simply stated "you lose" and gone home. As I understand it, the primary concern in Japan was that the Emperor could stay in power. If we had made that offer, the war may very well have ended without bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Any arguments about how the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless US lives is based upon the assumption what we had to invade Japan. I have never seen the logic in that as we would not have needed to invade Japan.
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You're making a highly revisionist argument from the comfort of your office, safely ensconced, 70 years after the fact. The consensus at the time was Japan would not surrender and the risk of a demonstration shot was not worth it ... remember, we only had two bombs at the time.
Keep in mind also that the purpose of war is to kill the spirit, as well as the body, of the enemy so terribly as to make sure that the enenby will not rise again. That's the part your missing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki accomplished the final killing of the Japanese sprit to fight.
Operation Olympus was the planned invasion of Japan and the estimates for allied casualties ran into the millions. <--Read that last number again.
In addition, millions of Japanese would have died. They was also an attempted military coup (Kyujuo incident) after the two bombs had been dropped and it came very close to succeeding.
You don't know your history. Good thing for you, and all of us, that you never had to make a command decision like this as a senior political leader or general officer in the US Army.