Hiroshima
The deaths of the people who died at Hiroshima as a result of the bombing 70 years ago today were a tragedy. Their numbers are estimated at between 90,000 and 166,000.
So were the deaths of every one of the other 50 million who died during the series of wars which we know as the "Second World War" - quite a few of those wars started by the Imperial Japanese Government, a regime which was every bit as evil, brutal and murderous as their Nazi allies.
While there are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre of Chinese civilians - men women and children - by Imperial Japanese forces, estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. E.g. in this one atrocity - one of many which they perpetrated - Imperial Japanese forces almost certainly murdered more innocent people than the number of people who died at Hiroshima and very possibly more than the combined death toll from both atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together.
I am very glad that I did not have to make Harry Truman's decision of whether or not to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. He had no good course of action available and none which would not cost many tens of thousands of innocent lives.
This has been fiercely debated by historians, generals, diplomats and experts for many years and we can never know what would have happened. I suspect that those experts who believe there was no other way of ending the war without an invasion of the Japanese home islands are right. I am convinced that those who suggest that this would have cost even more innocent lives than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs - possibly millions of lives as some Japanese sources have estimated - are also right.
So were the deaths of every one of the other 50 million who died during the series of wars which we know as the "Second World War" - quite a few of those wars started by the Imperial Japanese Government, a regime which was every bit as evil, brutal and murderous as their Nazi allies.
While there are no official numbers for the death toll in the Nanking Massacre of Chinese civilians - men women and children - by Imperial Japanese forces, estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. E.g. in this one atrocity - one of many which they perpetrated - Imperial Japanese forces almost certainly murdered more innocent people than the number of people who died at Hiroshima and very possibly more than the combined death toll from both atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together.
I am very glad that I did not have to make Harry Truman's decision of whether or not to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. He had no good course of action available and none which would not cost many tens of thousands of innocent lives.
This has been fiercely debated by historians, generals, diplomats and experts for many years and we can never know what would have happened. I suspect that those experts who believe there was no other way of ending the war without an invasion of the Japanese home islands are right. I am convinced that those who suggest that this would have cost even more innocent lives than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs - possibly millions of lives as some Japanese sources have estimated - are also right.
Comments
The one I find more galling is the decision to drop Fat Man over Nagasaki only 3 days later, I cant see any need to drop the second bomb at all, other than they wanted to test the bomb over a "live" target.
The Plutonium "Fat Man" type bomb had already been tested, at least its core and imposion device in the trinity test, New Mexico 3 weeks earlier (16 July 1945 this was also the worlds first atomic explosion)
the Little boy Uranium 235 bomb was not tested until being dropped over Hiroshima, they could not test it as U235 is not easy to come by.
I have always been of the opinion that dropping the first bomb must have indeed been a tough decision, and for that i have a lot of sympathy.
I don't think dropping the second sped up the Japanese surrender to the allies, and I don't think it achieved anything at all. To me the bombing of Nagasaki has always stood out as a case for mass murder.
There is a case for the argument you make, and if the Japanese government had consisted entirely of rational people you would certainly be right
The trouble is, the US had reason to believe that one bomb might not be enough for the Japanese government to get the message.
After it was obvious to anyone with a working brain that the Japanese had lost the war, including to their own military leadership, a report of their War Journal of the Imperial Headquarters concluded:
"We can no longer direct the war with any hope of success. The only course left is for Japan's one hundred million people to sacrifice their lives by charging the enemy to make them lose the will to fight."
While that attitude remained the loss of life in trying to conquer Japan would have been ghastly both for the civilian population of the country and for US and allied forces, and far in excess of that caused by the atomic bombs.
Unfortunately the first atomic bomb did not convince the Japanese hardliners that their "fight to the last infant" policy should be abandoned
The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know that making them was difficult. The military members of the government refused to believe the United States had built an atomic bomb, and were slow to change their mind even after Hiroshima: the Japanese military ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of Hiroshima's destruction. Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.
Consequently, although the Japanese Prime Minister and Foreign minister wanted to surrender immediately after Hiroshima and the Soviet declaration of war against Japan, they were in a 4:2 minority in the Japanese war cabinet. In fact, even after Nagasaki this only swung round to a 3:3 deadlock which was eventually broken by the Mikado - and there was an attempted military coup by those who wanted to prevent a surrender even then.
The Allies had broken the Japanese codes and had some idea about the arguments going on inside the enemy regime. They thought that a second nuclear attack would be necessary to convince the Japanese hardliners that resistance would be catastrophic. They may well have been right.
You see, as you are probably aware, its not difficult to make a U235 bomb, all you need to do is fire a Lump of U235 into another chunk of it which combined become a critical mass, thus starting a chain reaction. Its not difficult to do, so long as you have the U235 which is very very hard to come by. Most uranium is U238 which is no good for nasty bombs.
now plutonium is not really that difficult to make (all plutonium is man made, it does not exist naturally, but you can make it in a reactor from U238. The hard bit about making a plutonium bomb is getting it to trigger.
Here is a pic of THE GADGET this is the actual bomb used in the Trinity test, its the Nuclear Package of a fat man bomb, but you see all of those wires and things, well they are the key to the implosion to trigger it. all of the implosion causing explosions must be perfectly timed to the Microsecond, so all of those wires need to be the correct legnth, to the millimetre.
But you see that is just it, if the first one had been a "Fat Man" then they had shown that they had overcame the trigger problem, and if you can do it once you can certainly do it again, as the Plutonium is not too difficult to obtain.
They would probably have been correct in assuming that the us could not have many more U235 bombs, so it is an understandable (if rather crazy) attitude. But there is logic to it, somewhere.
Of course all of this is speculation, and it all hinges on the fact that the Japanese government knew that Hiroshima had been hit by a U235 nuclear bomb, rather than a plutonium one.